I have both noted and ragged on the two guys from Nebraska who visited every incorporated place in Iowa this year and turned their travels into a book, “Visit 939 Iowa”.
I am pleased and obligated to report that my concern about their not getting to every town in Iowa — 941 incorporated places, not 939 — has been alleviated. In their book, which is now available, the prologue notes that two towns WERE missing from their initial itineraries — Bertram and Coburg — and secret trips were made to reach them. But, as I suspected might have happened, “Visit 939 Iowa” was already their “brand”.
The travelers got their incorporated city list from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office, and because of that, their issue makes slightly more sense. The official list on the SOS office has some omissions and typos that may have been around since the list was compiled in the late 1970s. That’s a blog post I haven’t gotten around to writing yet.
There are two ways that pitfall could have been avoided. On the Iowa DOT map index, every town has a population and every unincorporated place doesn’t (except that the Amana line has the combined population of the seven villages). There’s also the option of using the Census Bureau’s list, organized by population at this very website, although the 2010 table doesn’t note the disincorporations since and my 2020 table is coming shortly.
While on the subject of visiting every city in Iowa, I was told of yet another person on this mission. Dave Baker operates the website iowathe29thstate.com but is mostly doing his thing on Facebook, so, again, it’s not on my radar. According to a pinned post, he started his visits 12 years ago. Baker says he has “photographs of over 13,000 sites and buildings around the state in one of the largest collections of contemporary Iowa known, which includes dozens of buildings which are no longer extant.”
The Visit 939 book’s website promotes “access to an estimated 23,000 photos,” as/but/and the physical book only has one photo from each place and a QR code to see more online.
And still on the subject of visiting every city in Iowa, IowaWatch covered Dave Miglin, who finished his list six months ago and was profiled in the Fort Dodge Messenger at that time. He also used the secretary of state’s list.