Jul 30

Electricity comes to Sioux City

Posted on Monday, July 30, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff


July 9, 2018: This is not Sioux City. It is CAL’s baseball diamond in Alexander. I happened to pass by when the team was having its last practice, ever. The tie-in to this post is that a district so small that it metaphorically couldn’t keep the high school’s lights on still managed to provide lights for baseball.

Sioux City’s three high school baseball diamonds will get lights in time for next season, the Sioux City Journal reports. Baseball was the only high school sport in the city that did not have lights for night games. Major League Baseball is chipping in nearly a third of the total cost to provide lights.

The fact Sioux City’s diamonds didn’t have lights was stunning news to me. North Tama has them*, and so do NICL schools. It wasn’t until somewhat recently, when I learned that Iowa Star Conference games were being played as varsity-then-JV doubleheaders starting at 5, that I even became aware that some of Iowa’s smallest schools don’t have lights at their diamonds.

*Based on the construction of the athletic complex, North Tama could play night baseball games before the Chicago Cubs.

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Jul 27

1A baseball final: Unbeaten team vs. private school

Posted on Friday, July 27, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The Class 1A baseball final, as usual, will pit a private school against a public school. There was a “balance”  of four of each starting the state tournament, but three were eliminated in the first round, removing a chance for the private schools to even out the post-Norway final matchup totals (26 private, 28 public).

For the seventh time in a decade, Mason City Newman is the private school side, while undefeated Lisbon comes off an all-Linn-County semifinal.

A private school will be in other baseball finals as well, with Iowa City Regina vs. Centerville for 2A and an all-private semifinal in 3A.

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Jul 26

Big boost to save Lincoln Highway bridge

Posted on Thursday, July 26, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Two grants are going to go a long way in preserving Lincoln Highway history in Tama. First, earlier this month, the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs awarded a $50,000 grant for the Lincoln Highway bridge, getting funding very near the goal. (Story: KWWL) The Tama-Toledo Lions Club chipped in another $1,000.

Then, the Mansfield Charitable Foundation gave a grant to the Tama County Preservation Commission to do work on an application for submitting the King Tower Cafe to the National Register of Historic Places. (Story: Tama News-Herald)

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Jul 25

Another stoplight for US 69 in Ames

Posted on Wednesday, July 25, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Not a huge development in the scheme of things, but US 69 (South Duff Avenue) is getting its second stoplight south of US 30 in Ames, reports the Ames Tribune. The construction project will three-lane 69 from the first city street intersection on the south side northward and place a stoplight at Crystal Street (the Casey’s corner). The project, which also detours US 69 onto I-35, starts today and goes through Aug. 30.

Perhaps the more notable item is yet another apartment complex going up in Ames. The amount of off-campus housing has just exploded since I was at ISU, but a lot of it was near the South Dakota Avenue exit that opened in 2001.

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Jul 24

US 20 Galva-Early detour over

Posted on Tuesday, July 24, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

New Highway 20 took another step forward Friday, when the detour between Galva and Early was lifted. Traffic is now on the new westbound lanes, a construction notice said last week. The video below is from KCAU.

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Jul 23

218 construction detoured through Van Horne

Posted on Monday, July 23, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff


May 16, 2017: The original south end of US 218, at US 30, which has always been the Lincoln Highway here (westbound lanes). The four-lane will be shifted very slightly for the new interchange.

Construction on the US 30/218 interchange begins today, changing an original US highway endpoint and a historic Lincoln Highway junction. A bridge will carry 218 over 30, while ramps are constructed in the northwest and southeast corners. A pioneer cemetery and the historic Youngville Cafe will be spared (although I wonder how, or if, Youngville will be open the rest of the year.)

The Iowa DOT says 218 traffic will be detoured on E44 and V66, through Van Horne, to get to 30. While on the map it might seem to make more sense to go through Newhall instead, that way would have a curve in the county road and this one has a regular intersection instead. (Also, it means a left turn onto the two-lane part of 30, instead of the four-lane part, for southbound traffic.)

I would say this means any non-Vinton traffic from/to the northwest to/from 30 would be better off using IA 21.

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Jul 20

License Plate Letters — HDL

Posted on Friday, July 20, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

No, not a cholesterol monitor, but before the first of the month I saw that the new system of license plates is in full effect and into the H’s. According to this story from WHO at the beginning of the month, all the counties are now distributing the new ones.

In addition, I saw another plate old enough to drink (ACQ) on I-380 last week, with a 2019 registration sticker.

This is the only time anything black-and-gold is allowed on the car.

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Jul 19

RAGBRAI not going through Ledges

Posted on Thursday, July 19, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

I think I’ll do a strikethru on my list of RAGBRAI towns for this case: Heavy flooding in central Iowa means RAGBRAI will not be going through Ledges State Park. Instead, riders will use part of the four-lane US 30 on the south side of Boone, then R27 on the way to Luther, next Tuesday.

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Jul 18

‘New’ pictures from southern Iowa

Posted on Wednesday, July 18, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff


April 12, 2009: A sequential intersection in Missouri, MO 5 and MO 6 at Milan. At the time, Sullivan County was the nearest one to Iowa I had not visited.

About a year ago, I announced my intent to extend my coverage of Iowa highway endpoints to those of post-1980 routes that existed after 1969. I pulled out some photos I took on trips but may not have thought, at the time, that they would be relevant to the end pages.

Well, I found another cache of useful pictures — mostly from a daylong spin with the main objective of getting to Sullivan County, Missouri. They’d just been sitting, never added. The person responsible for this oversight has been sacked.

So! Despite having only one true trip under my belt between the end of my “One year, 29 states” adventures and mid-June, I have added photos to multiple pages:

  • IA 125, with clarification of its end in Salem and a temporary end at the city limits that may or may not have been signed but was the legal terminus for a few months
  • IA 202, photos at its south end in Missouri
  • IA 206, photos at US 65
  • IA 220, not from the 2009 trip but an even shorter spurt in spring 2015 before I clinched every mile of every highway in Iowa
  • IA 266, with a photo of downtown Weldon that could be passed off for a pre-1980 end point
  • Business US 34 in Fairfield, from 2013, of the east end as seen from eastbound 34
  • And some textual fixes to IA 77 and 156, but no new photos at this time.
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Jul 17

The violence inherent in the system

Posted on Tuesday, July 17, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

And now for something completely different.

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