(July 1, 1920-July 22, 1939)
- They knew it as: A short connection from Bondurant to the Great River Road just to the south
- We know it as: NE 72nd Street between Bondurant and Altoona
- Let's get granular: NE 72nd Street (going straight across present-day US 65 on the west side of Central Iowa Featherlite Trailers), a hair of NE 70th Avenue (a culvert over Mud Creek [link to Google Street View] looks 1920s Highway Commission-quality), and Grant Street
- Related routes: IA 64, which replaced 88, and IA 330, which replaced the IA 64 diagonal
- Points of interest:
- The east-west extension of 1931-33 east of Elkhart is surprisingly
hard to pin down. The multiple state maps of the time make it clear
that it did not use what's now F22/NE 134th Avenue through
Farrar, including the South Skunk River crossing, but also that it
met IA 64 (now 117) north of Mingo. NE 118th Avenue
crosses the South Skunk but would not intersect 64 north of Mingo.
NE 126th Avenue is smack in the middle of the Chichaqua Bottoms
Greenbelt and simply does not exist for multiple segments. Quite
simply, if my interpretation is correct, the road as drawn in the
1932 maps could only be a paper highway.
- This little route managed to evolve into an expressway. First it was extended north and east, and then in the mid-1930s, the whole alignment changed to become a straight line picking up Des Moines' Hubbell Avenue going all the way northeast to the Lincoln Highway near Marshalltown.
| IA 88 (I) endpoint history | |||
| FROM | TO | NORTH | SOUTH |
| 7/1/20 | 1921 | Bondurant | IA 7 (NE 72nd St at NE 62nd Ave) |
| 1921 | 1/8/31 | IA 7, later US 32, later US 6 (1st Ave at 8th St, Altoona) |
|
| 1/8/31 | Late 1933 | IA 64 (N 71st Ave W[?] at IA 117) | |
| Late 1933 | 12/1/35 | IA 64 (US 65 at IA 117, pre-2018) | US 6 (Hubbell Ave at Broadway) |
| 12/1/35 | 7/22/39 | US 30 (IA 330 at E41) | |
NORTH End: Bondurant, Polk County
The existence of this spur route to Bondurant has to be tied to a change in the River-to-River Road. The original 1910 guide had the road between Altoona and Mitchellville avoid two crossings of the interurban (now the Iowa Interstate System Railroad) by using NE 72nd Street, NE 70th Avenue, and NE 112th Street. This route would have negated the need for a separate road to Bondurant, as it would have skirted the city limits. But sometime in the early 1910s, the east-west part moved a mile south, along the "Good Road to Hotel Colfax", NE 62nd Avenue. From there eastward, the R2R followed the section line to Colfax along 6th Street NW in Mitchellville and S 28th Avenue W in Jasper County. Today NE 62nd jumps the section line where I-80 crosses near NE 80th Street.
From 1980 to 2003 a good portion of this route was re-incorporated into a secret state highway, IA 945.
SOUTH End (1): IA 7, now NE 72nd St. at NE 62nd Ave.,
Bondurant, Polk County
SOUTH End (2): IA 7, now 1st Ave. at 8th St., Altoona, Polk County
IA 88 was tripled in length almost immediately. When IA 7 was changed between Altoona and Colfax, to run east then north to Mitchellville on what we know as old US 6 today, 88's endpoint moved to a sleepy little corner in the village of Altoona. That corner now has a Hy-Vee on the southwest corner and a Walgreens on the northeast.
Page created 3/18/20; last updated 2/14/21