Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

Council: Can’t build pig in Marengo city square (Cedar Rapids Gazette, January 4, 1966)

MARENGO — Marengo isn’t going to have a pig in the city square park.
In unanimous action, the city council Monday night favored construction of the pig statue but not in the city square park as had been proposed. This action was done on advice from City Attorney John Wilkinson. Wilkinson cited legal opinions and his own opinion that the park couldn’t be used for this purpose. …
The development corporation originally proposed the pig as a tribute to the pork industry in Iowa and as a tourist attraction for Marengo. The construction of the pig in the park was favored by the planning and zoning commission.
In citing support for the project, [the group’s treasurer] said there was more unity among businessmen in favor of building the hog than there had been for anything else.

So we didn’t get a big pig to go with Albert the Bull. How about a different animal? Here’s a sleeper pick: Iowa ranks ninth or tenth in multiple categories in the sheep industry. Let’s go for a giant ewe and put it in … wait for it …

Lambs Grove.

via Library of Congress

It is true that President James K. Polk’s diary on December 28, 1846, ended with “Nothing of much interest occurred to day”. However, through the Library of Congress, we know that wasn’t the entire entry. Polk, like many presidents of the time, had much of his time taken up with office-seekers or, as seen above, visitors “with the business of seeking offices for their friends.” This was before President Garfield’s assassination led to civil service reform.

Iowa was supposed to have been admitted to the Union nearly two years earlier, as the free-state counterpart to Florida. However, the original Enabling Act of March 3, 1845, did not delineate Iowa’s border as it is today. Instead, it used the proposal that extended into southern Minnesota but also lopped off the western third of the state. See my “Iowa’s northern and western borders” history page. The “Land Between Two Rivers” was established by Congress August 4, 1846, and then the Act of Admission was signed December 28:

But for President Polk it was just another day at the office.

I have both noted and ragged on the two guys from Nebraska who visited every incorporated place in Iowa this year and turned their travels into a book, “Visit 939 Iowa”.

I am pleased and obligated to report that my concern about their not getting to every town in Iowa — 941 incorporated places, not 939 — has been alleviated. In their book, which is now available, the prologue notes that two towns WERE missing from their initial itineraries — Bertram and Coburg — and secret trips were made to reach them. But, as I suspected might have happened, “Visit 939 Iowa” was already their “brand”.

The travelers got their incorporated city list from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office, and because of that, their issue makes slightly more sense. The official list on the SOS office has some omissions and typos that may have been around since the list was compiled in the late 1970s. That’s a blog post I haven’t gotten around to writing yet.

There are two ways that pitfall could have been avoided. On the Iowa DOT map index, every town has a population and every unincorporated place doesn’t (except that the Amana line has the combined population of the seven villages). There’s also the option of using the Census Bureau’s list, organized by population at this very website, although the 2010 table doesn’t note the disincorporations since and my 2020 table is coming shortly.

While on the subject of visiting every city in Iowa, I was told of yet another person on this mission. Dave Baker operates the website iowathe29thstate.com but is mostly doing his thing on Facebook, so, again, it’s not on my radar. According to a pinned post, he started his visits 12 years ago. Baker says he has “photographs of over 13,000 sites and buildings around the state in one of the largest collections of contemporary Iowa known, which includes dozens of buildings which are no longer extant.”

The Visit 939 book’s website promotes “access to an estimated 23,000 photos,” as/but/and the physical book only has one photo from each place and a QR code to see more online.

And still on the subject of visiting every city in Iowa, IowaWatch covered Dave Miglin, who finished his list six months ago and was profiled in the Fort Dodge Messenger at that time. He also used the secretary of state’s list.