July 2, 2014: City limit sign for Hudson just north of IA 58’s rebuilt south end. Black-on-white and all-caps are both non-standard.
When IA 86 opened from IA 9 to the Minnesota border in November 2013, the “Dickinson County” sign was not only the old small style, but it was black text over a white background. It was fixed in a month.
When the reconstructed US 63 opened from the south side of Hudson to US 20 in summer 2013, more signs were the wrong color. The one seen above is still there.
As it turns out, both the IA 86 project and US 63 project had Cedar Valley Corp. as the primary contractor. If the contractor was in charge of the signs (and the letting contract for 63 did have signage pages), that could explain why two distant locations had identical issues.