Niland’s Cafe in Colo, a classic feature along the Lincoln Highway, has reopened for the second time in three years.
The cafe closed in late 2018, then reopened in 2019, then closed again in mid-2020. Earlier this month it came back yet again (Ames Tribune), with more seating but a smaller menu for homemade food.
Major and/or interesting things in the Iowa Transportation Commission’s five-year program, continued:
June 20, 2017: This intersection on the south side of Nevada will not be closed in 2023 in favor of an overpass between here and the S14 intersection in the deep background. UPDATE/CORRECTION 6/25/21: Current plans leave the intersection intact at the bridge’s completion.
Here is the first part of a list of major projects or interesting things I saw in the draft five-year construction plan, released after the Iowa Transportation Commission’s May meeting. The highway stuff begins about halfway through the PDF.
Not mentioned below are the continuation of the I-80/380 interchange replacement, I-29/480 interchange, or future redesign (again) of the northeast mixmaster in Des Moines.
What’s left of what once was the Corwith-Wesley-Lu Verne school system — officially never consolidated but together for three decades — is probably going away soon.
Algona and Lu Verne have formed a reorganization committee, Radio Iowa reports. Realistically, this means the absorption of the Lu Verne district, which officially got most of C-W’s land in 2015 but maintained only an elementary for those students while CWL’s sixth grade and up went to Algona. Algona High School, never renamed, directly includes Burt, Titonka, and Whittemore, and through the present sharing agreement includes Corwith, Wesley, and Lu Verne.
Barring any shaving off of Lu Verne’s land to the south, the Algona district would be 550 square miles. It would be Iowa’s largest single-high-school unified district, but just a shade below MVAOCOU in single-high-school area (two districts) and Western Dubuque in overall area. For more about that, read my series from June 2016.
(NOTE: Present school/district size numbers are slightly different from this 2014 blog post, following a “2015-2016 School District Review Program (SDRP) effort through the U.S. Census Bureau” that allowed for digitally-pegged maps and more accurate area measurements. I don’t blame Western Dubuque for sticking with 555 square miles instead of 553.96, though.)
I-80’s 1st Avenue exit in Coralville, scheduled for replacement in 2023, will be Johnson County’s first diverging diamond. That will be a year after I-380 at Tower Terrace Road becomes the first such exit in eastern Iowa.
The interesting thing about this plan (link to lots of renderings here) is incorporation of a trail crossing. The trail, on the east side of the interchange, will have underpasses at three places:
The exit will serve the arena whose naming rights deal hasn’t been disclosed because of Coralville’s assertion that actually a nonprofit that the city created made the deal, not the city, and therefore it’s not public record.
We have a lot of census-related numbers floating around right now, and each makes one piece of a puzzle, but it will be hard to put them all together until the granular data comes out later this year. Here’s what I DO know:
All that said, I can still make maps based on the data that doesn’t count — for entertainment purposes only, of course. Maps with those numbers (the estimates that will be voided in 2022) will come later, but I’ve already found one wacky circumstance.
The BLUE counties plus Ida, Sac, and Monona = 790,150. The RED counties plus Ida, Sac, and Monona = 790,150. This number is 740 less than the per-district division from the 2020 estimates, thus a functional number for the second iteration of my redistricting game. If I assign Boone County to the Blue Group and the other three to the Red Group, both will form districts that vary from the 2020 estimate ideal by less than 1000 — and look like plausible districts, to boot. This also means that the remaining 19 counties account for half the state’s population.
Coming up with exactly 790,150 people through two almost completely different county combinations? That’s far out, man.
Maps for this summer’s RAGBRAI route, which is last summer’s RAGBRAI route, were released online May 3. Wait, didn’t we do this already? Yes, we did! But what’s presumably the final route has some notable differences from the previous final route, especially in omission of towns. The January route, in turn, had some subtle differences from the FIRST map, released only in line form. This is my analysis of the differences, through saved daily images and this zoomable map.
My chronology of Iowa congressional districts had Tama Jim Wilson’s election years off by a decade. He was elected to the U.S. House in 1882 and 1884. Blog-me should’ve told map-me about this, but even then the error has been displayed for a decade.
So corrected.
An e-mail from a mailing list and this DOT press release bring good news for western Iowa: The I-80 dual, divided freeway separation will be completed this week.
There will be some closures to get lane shifts complete, but starting Thursday, a traveler getting on I-80 at 13th Street in Omaha can go straight through to Madison Avenue in Council Bluffs with only the I-29 exits in between. The I-29/local/outer lanes have the South Expressway and South 24th Street exits. The entrance ramp at South Expressway will have its own bridge and lanes to southbound I-29 and eastbound I-80.
Technically, if you’re really hard-core about it, this means you can travel I-80 without traveling I-29, and travel I-29 without traveling I-80.
The wrap-up of this part of the Council Bluffs Interstate System project comes just as the next part starts. Construction on the I-29/I-480 interchange, which will include a complete rebuild and changes to the Nebraska Avenue, Avenue G, and 35th Street ramps, began in April (KETV). At the same time, the I-480 Missouri River bridge is undergoing major rehab on the Nebraska side that will last 2½ years (WOWT).
KSO, Iowa’s other three-letter AM station starting with a K, debuted Nov. 2, 1925. The Berry Seed Co. of Clarinda had specifically applied for the letters: “Keep Serving Others.” The following articles are from the Clarinda Journal in 1932, which became the Clarinda Herald-Journal at the start of 1933.
New manager at KSO takes over station (March 10)
L.H. Greer of Des Moines is now in Clarinda, as director of KSO, the local broadcasting station of the Iowa Broadcasting Co. Mr. Greer, who succeeds Morton R. Duff, has been chief engineer for several radio stations, and was the engineer in charge of reinstallation here several months ago when the KSO equipment was revamped. He states that he will soon announce reorganization plans which will include important personnel changes, and contemplates more localizing of programs.
KSO hearing in September (July 14)
The federal radio commission will not hand down their decision on KSO’s petition to move from Clarinda to Des Moines until September, according to dispatches from Washington news headquarters. The hearing of the Iowa Broadcasting Co., the Register and Tribune subsidiary company, was given July 7th. [KSO had signed off June 24.]
Will dismantle KSO radio tower (August 11)
Engineer L.H. Greer dropped into Clarinda from Des Moines Wednesday with A.J. Newman, structural engineer with the Newman Construction Co. of Des Moines, to survey the possibilities of salvaging the tower in case the federal radio commission gives their final approval to move the local KSO station to Des Moines. The transmitter was found to be too big for Des Moines, an thus it will be disposed of, either dismantled or sold to someone else who might be able to use it.
“Reorganization plans” indeed, eh? For way more details on KSO, see this page from the Des Moines Broadcasting website. The radio waves get crossed, so to speak, in 1935, when KSO was renamed KRNT, for the Des Moines Register ‘n’ Tribune. The KSO letters were moved to KWCR, a Cedar Rapids station whose license was relocated to Des Moines after its acquisition by Iowa Broadcasting. That KSO, after a series of ownership and call letter changes, is now KXNO 1460 AM, a sports-talk station in Des Moines.
