I was starting to refine my IA 6 (1920 Series) page, and I realized I had
a problem with the Cedar Rapids route. While all the Iowa Highway
Commission state maps have IA 6 on First Avenue starting with the 1925
inset, I couldn’t be sure that on July 1, 1920, that route and by
association the Lincoln Highway were on First. Now, after lots of combing
through newspaper archives, I am sure of the following two things:
Since this contradicts every official map from both the 1920s and 1990s, I feel that a complete evidence dump is necessary.
Huebinger’s Map and Guide for Iowa Official Trans-Continental Route (1912) used First Avenue through downtown, but also used E Avenue and Edgewood Road to get out of the city, and that alignment does not appear to have made it to 1913. Lincoln Highway historian Gregory Franzwa, in 1995, also placed the first iteration of the highway on First Avenue downtown. Prairie Rivers of Iowa's informative panel downtown, from the 2010s, says the Lincoln was moved from First to Second in 1916.
But that change appears to have happened earlier, if not from the beginning.
New hotel for Cedar Rapids
The sale of the Perfection building at the corner of Second avenue and
Fourth street east, as announced in the Republican Saturday, was made
public shortly before noon Saturday ...
The new hotel will be called the Lincoln, this name having been decided
because the building is on the Lincoln Highway. ...
The new owners are convinced they have the exact location for a strictly
modern hotel, for they have a corner on the Lincoln highway and one which
is halfway between the two railway stations in Cedar Rapids.
— Cedar Rapids Republican, January 31, 1915
The hotel building, which started as a clothing factory, was demolished in 1977, according to a 2019 Gazette feature story. The parking lot next to the railroad lasted until being replaced with a parking ramp in the mid-2010s. (There is no Fourth Street SE between First and 12th avenues SE downtown today, its space occupied by the railroad and Cedar River Trail.)
On both April 6 and December 19, 1915, the Republican wrote about Western Auto Supply Company opening a garage at the corner of Second Avenue and Fifth Street. "Second Avenue, the route of the Lincoln Highway in Cedar Rapids, is asphalt paved and unobstructed by street cars[.]" That connects to a substantial piece of data in favor of Second: Automobile Row. "[On] Second avenue, four gasoline filling stations, six tire and rubber companies, and twelve garages have been put up to accommodate the tourists that use the Lincoln highway," a Republican article July 23, 1918, said in a story about conflicting signs about the Lincoln route — literally, since based on news coverage both First and Second had LH markings.
Lincoln Highway in Second Avenue; The
Matter Is Settled
Association is granted the right to mark the route through the city
The route of the Lincoln Highway through Cedar Rapids is in Second Avenue.
The controversy regarding the route was settled for all time today when
the city council ... granted ... the right to mark the highway down this
thoroughfare, from Nineteenth street east to Fifteenth street west. ...
— Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, August 26, 1918
A letter from the local association consul from this same time in the Iowa DOT archives outlines the following route, east to west: First Avenue East, 19th Street East, Second Avenue East/West, Third Avenue West, 15th Street West, Maple Drive (which flows from A Avenue), and Johnson Avenue. This resembles the 2011 Heritage Byway route, except that the latter uses First Avenue all the way instead of Second, and then splits east on 10th Street/Mount Vernon Road to reflect the 1921 cutoff while a loop continues on First Avenue to Marion.
The 1918 Lincoln Highway on Second Avenue is rock solid. Two years later, the Iowa primary highway system was created, and a decade-long struggle between numbers and names began.
There was no First Avenue bridge for a couple of years as the present structure was built, so we know all traffic had to use Second. The Evening Gazette touted the new bridge on September 17, 1921, and mentioned the Mount Vernon cutoff for the Lincoln Highway would open Oct. 1. The Iowa Highway Commission had put IA 6 on Mount Vernon Road to begin with, and paving on the cutoff started before the end of 1920.
But as far as the Lincoln Highway Association was concerned, the official route continued to go through Marion. On September 28, 1922, the Evening Gazette reported on a meeting to discuss a "possible diversion of the Lincoln Highway from the Marion road to the Mt. Vernon 'cut-off,' following primary road No. 6." "Among other matters to be taken up by the officials is the agitation among residents along First avenue to have the Lincoln highway changed from Second to First avenue." The next day, the story was that there was no decision. The route east would get changed to the cutoff by 1924.
Another clash between names and numbers was taking place on the Red Ball Route. The Highway Commission changed the route of IA 11/40 south out of Cedar Rapids to use Bowling Street instead of J Street in late 1923. Months later, the Red Ball Route Association president complained vociferously that "markers were placed on the new road without our consent."
On August 15, 1924, the Evening Gazette printed a large map of Linn County highways and the money dedicated to their road improvements — but did not show any route details inside city limits.
A Complete Official Road Guide to the Lincoln Highway, Fifth Edition (1924) has a map of Cedar Rapids with the Lincoln Highway on Second Avenue. It labels the connection to A Avenue as 13th Street, but based on surrounding street lines, I think that label is wrong, and the connection was still 15th Street as in 1918.
In spring 1925, the Cedar Rapids City Council set a new ordinance on "arterial highways". The March 9 Evening Gazette story is headlined "Second Avenue east and west is boulevard," and the ordinance covers nearly all of Second Avenue from 12th Street SW to 19th Street SE, which is the portion covered by the 1918 Lincoln route. The April 2, 1925, Mount Vernon and Lisbon Hawk-Eye Herald backs this up: "Second avenue, the Lincoln highway route, is an arterial highway, which means person entering it from side streets must come to a full stop."
It makes no sense for IA 6 to be on First if traffic ordinances make Second the prominent road. Yet, this is exactly what the 1925 state map (below), the first to show insets, tells us is the case, along with use of 9th Street NW to get to A Avenue. Note also the hiccup in the IA 11/40 route on the south side, which was fixed in 1926 with a northward extension of Bowling Street past what's now Wilson Avenue. (It did not appear on maps until cartography changed in 1932.)
At the same time that was happening, the Iowa Legislature was implementing two huge changes: It gave the Highway Commission "complete authority in primary road maintenance and construction" and created the first gas tax, 2 cents per gallon. (Evening Gazette, April 9)
On October 30, 1925, the Evening Gazette printed a beautiful map showing every street in the city for the new zoning ordinance, but there were no highway markers included. The map, created just before a significant annexation, sets the city in the sections bordered by their modern names of Wilson Avenue, 18th Street NW, 42nd Street NE, and Memorial Drive. A map two years later, following implementation of the US route system, shows the highways but there's one catch: First, Second, and Third avenues are all drawn in, making it impossible to tell which is actually US 30. (Also note that on the west side, the route is still drawn on 15th Street instead of 9th.) A post-annexation zoning map December 12, 1929, repeats the 1925 map's non-marking of highways.
Evening Gazette and Republican, October 23, 1927
A change in state law in 1929 defining all primary roads in cities as "arterial highways" resulted in another set of changes in Cedar Rapids. As spelled out in the June 2 Evening Gazette and Republican: First Avenue from Marion to 13th Street, US 161; Oakland Avenue and 13th Street to Second Avenue, IA 11; Second Avenue from 10th to 13th streets, 161 and 11; Second Avenue "from Tenth street through the city and out the present west side route of the Lincoln highway" and Tenth Street to Mount Vernon Road and east, US 30; and South First Street "from Second avenue west to Bowling street and south to the city limits," US 161 again. (Note: Capitalization styles were different then. Today we would write "Second Avenue West", and the geographic direction is southeast.)
"And while on the subject of right of way," the article continued, "it might be made clear that Third avenue all the way and First avenue to Thirteenth street are not arterial highways [emphasis added], even though custom is beginning to make them so." Notably, this means that Second Avenue from 13th to 19th streets was being taken out of the system, something affirmed in a one-paragraph story July 22 about moving stop signs on intersecting streets in that area from Second to First.
On August 20, 1929, the Evening Gazette and Republican had a story headlined "1,163 out-of-state cars passed through here on Lincoln Highway last Saturday, auto club reports." The opening paragraph said that number came through counting cars on the Second Avenue Bridge. This was a repeat of a count done four years earlier; on September 9, 1925, the paper had referred to "the Lincoln highway bridge on Second avenue."
In a two-paragraph Evening Gazette and Republican story nine days later, the city council proposed this route change for US 30 west of the Cedar River: "north in First street west from Second avenue [emphasis added], then west in A avenue through B avenue to Eighteenth street west, thence to the present location of the highway[.]" Cedar Rapids' screwy street grid results in small portions of A Avenue NW and B Avenue NW west of I-380 turning into B Avenue NW and C Avenue NW, respectively, at the railroad tracks, hence the "A through B" line. (A scrap of A at First remains near the I-380 curve in 2022, although all structures in the area were removed in 2012.) Notice, in this case, that the reference is specifically to US 30, and not the Lincoln Highway, the LH being officially defunct a year earlier.
Kenyon's Plat Book of Linn County, Iowa (1930) (above) is the only non-IHC source of the 1918-31 period I've found with highways drawn inside city limits. US 30 clearly uses Second Avenue in this clip west of the Cedar River. But the map also uses 14th Street as the connector to A Avenue, which no other map and no Lincoln Highway-era listing has.
The final piece of evidence that Second Avenue, and not First, was the highway route throughout the 1920s comes when US 30 was rerouted in 1931. The new route: Johnson Avenue NW, B Avenue NW, 10th Street NW, First Avenue, First Street NE, A Avenue NE, and 10th Street NE.
Highway rerouting in city in effect
All First Ave. traffic is halted by boulevard stop at Tenth; automatic
sign to be provided
Traffic on highway No. 30 through Cedar Rapids was transferred to the new
route Monday afternoon with the changing of road signs by highway
commission employees to that route. At the same time, highway No. 161 was
routed along First Avenue east from Thirteenth to Tenth street where the
turn was made in Tenth street to Second avenue. ...
Heretofore, highway No. 161 has been routed south from First Avenue east
in Thirteenth street to Second avenue. This has been abandoned and the
highway joins No. 30 at Tenth street. Both No. 161 and No. 30 use Tenth
street for one block to Second avenue where No. 161 turns west in Second
Avenue and No. 30 continues south.
— Evening Gazette and Republican, July 7, 1931
The last sentence of the above excerpt is incorrect. The next day, there was a short don't-call-it-a-correction story that affirmed US 161 was also moving off Second Avenue, to the new alignment of First Avenue, 10th Street, A Avenue, First Street, and First Avenue.
In conclusion, I believe the state map insets from 1925-31 showing First Avenue as the highway running northeast-to-southwest through downtown Cedar Rapids are incorrect, and there is overwhelming evidence from the period pointing to Second Avenue instead. However, signing the Lincoln Highway Heritage Byway along First instead of Second makes the most sense for travelers today. Second Avenue, following its two-way conversion, is peppered with four-way stops and interrupted by the PCI Medical Pavilion between 10th and 11th streets. The Firestone Complete Auto Care Shop on the south corner of 2nd Avenue and 10th Street — where the post-cutoff Lincoln turned east, but the original route continued ahead through the pavilion building — is one of the last connections to Second's transcontinental past.
Page created 5/24/22; last updated 6/26/22