Langland Lands Powerful Blows
(Ames Tri-Weekly Tribune, February 19, 1919)
Ole Langland, editor of the Cambridge Leader, takes some awful wallops at Ames people for wanting the Jefferson highway to pass through Ames in place of making the zig-zag through the hills and curves.
There is just no use in Ole getting all peeved up over the matter. He says the people along the Cambridge route have done all that has been asked of them. That they have cut down dangerous hills, filled ditches, etc. It is perfectly right for the good old fiddler to see that his end of the county is kept in apple pie order, and we do not blame him for boosting away that the Jefferson highway should come his way.
But shucks, what’s the use of wasting good print paper and real ink on the subject as far as Ole is concerned. The improved highway as it comes from Cambridge will make a good feeder to the Jefferson highway as it connects with them at Nevada after passing through Ames.
Ole is candid in his article in speaking of the hills, the curves, etc. that lead from Ankeny and that candidness merely spells that the route is very undesirable. Ole says the stretch of road between Canada and New Orleans is via the route leading through Cambridge and the best in the world. But somebody told Ole that was so and that is as far as he knows about it.
=========
When the primary road system was established soon afterward, IA 1 went from Ankeny to Nevada via Huxley and Ames instead of Elkhart and Cambridge. The official route of the Jefferson Highway changed to the same in 1921.