Apr 06

Finally, a plan to six-lane I-35 to Ames

Posted on Thursday, April 6, 2017, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Next Tuesday in Huxley, the DOT will have a meeting about a project that’s at least 10 and probably 20 years overdue — upgrading I-35 to six lanes between Ankeny and Ames. This would be the first rural six-lane interstate in Iowa.

For the most part, the existing northbound lanes would be the new median. I suppose the new northbound lanes will be built, traffic shifted, and southbound lanes moved on to the old northbound lanes while the new southbound lanes are built. It’s a 16-mile segment but there are only two interchanges involved (the Elkhart exit and IA 210).

This is not in the five-year plan; it’s going to be a decade out still. What is in the five-year plan is six-laning I-35 between Oralabor Road and the new exit on the north side of Ankeny, which won’t be done until 2020; converting the I-35/US 30 pure cloverleaf into an interchange with flyover ramps, which are dotted out on the plans linked above; and the replacement of Skunk River bridges just south of 30, which would be built with the six-lane in mind. The only other place Iowa has planned that far ahead is at I-80 over the Cedar River.

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Apr 05

HMS bond issue fails by seven votes

Posted on Wednesday, April 5, 2017, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The third attempt at a bond issue in the HMS school district barely missed out on a supermajority, KIWA reports. There were 1518 votes cast, so 60 percent would be 911 votes in favor of the bond issue, and it got 904.

Now we wait to see if the district will make good on its threat to close a facility if the vote failed. This is the second-closest bond referendum failure that I’ve paid close attention to, but the results of the closest one resulted in something much more dire.

The Central district of Elkader got its bond issue passed, and so did West Lyon; Osage’s failed a second time.

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Apr 04

Orange school demolished

Posted on Tuesday, April 4, 2017, at 10:06 AM by Jeff

Until 1964, Orange Township on the south side of Waterloo was its own school district. Even after a consolidation of Orange with Waterloo West and Waterloo East, Orange kept its high school until 1972 and even had a football team that played area small schools. Then it became elementary-only until it closed in 2013.

At the end of March, the last tangible link to Orange High School went away with the demolition of the 1915 building and its additions.

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Apr 03

Atlas Obscura finds the Sullivan Line

Posted on Monday, April 3, 2017, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Another article about the Honey War? Sure!

For a shorter story and more geographic nitty-gritty, there is my page on the Sullivan Line, but my photos were taken when the grass wasn’t green. Also, I visited the marker in “the corner” southeast of Bedford a second time on my circumnavigation.

(PS: The Matchstick Marvels Museum in Gladbrook is the first item that pops up in the Atlas Obscura search for “Iowa.”)

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Apr 01

A story

Posted on Saturday, April 1, 2017, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
April 7, 2016: The story you are about to read is a fib, but it’s short.

The town of Floris is very small, 153 people, between Ottumwa and Bloomfield. One day the only person walking around was a man named Hugh. Hugh saw a leaf pile burning and threatening to get out of control. He called out, but no one answered. He resorted to hooking up a garden hose to an outside spigot and sprayed the perimeter, keeping the burn contained.

The lesson of the story is that Hugh, and only Hugh, can prevent Floris fires.

Posted in Iowa Miscellaneous | Comments Off on A story
Mar 31

A light at the end of the tunnel for I-29 in Sioux City

Posted on Friday, March 31, 2017, at 10:00 AM by Jeff


June 12, 2005: I-29 at the downtown exit in Sioux City, not too long before the state started a project to rebuild and expand the interstate through the city. The first photo with the news story linked below shows this exact gantry today with the same signs, including the leftmost one that one held a marker for IA 12. The next exit is for US 77, but the BGS doesn’t mention it or have an exit number.

Construction should be completed on the northbound lanes of I-29 through Sioux City this year, the Iowa DOT told the Sioux City Journal. That includes a reconfiguration of the exit to downtown east of US 77, which takes away or moves certain ramps that were considered fine in mid-1950s design but are inadequate today.

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Mar 30

Going into the I-74 toll bridge offices

Posted on Thursday, March 30, 2017, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The Quad-City Times‘ Barb Ickes got a chance to explore the “underbelly” of the I-74 toll plaza and offices that span a space over the Mississippi River joining the twin bridges. The photo gallery is definitely worth a look through. The toll booths were closer to the Illinois side of the river, but it’s right where the “Welcome to Iowa” and US 67 BGS are.

The offices will be removed when the bridge is demolished, of course, but it will be interesting to see how that will be handled, since this is the only place the bridges are connected and it’s over the river.

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Mar 29

A county has topped its 1870 population peak

Posted on Wednesday, March 29, 2017, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

UPDATE 9/20/21: After the official 2020 census numbers came out … it didn’t.

========================

To dig into the 2016 county population estimates, let’s start with the map I made last year.

countypeakdecade

The pattern hasn’t changed much: Every decade, the urban counties hit a peak — except that some in northeast Iowa topped out in 1980 — and a big lump of rural counties get farther away from the totals they had a century or more ago.

But in census estimates released last week (numbers obtained via the federal site, because the Iowa State Data Center’s bells-and-whistles website is nigh unusable), an exception arose.

Jefferson County passed 18,000 people and its 1870 peak of 17,839 last year, according to the census estimates. In fact, the re-evaluated yearly estimates put the record first in 2015.

Both the 1880 and 1900 censuses weren’t that far off from 1870’s, but there was enough of a dip afterward that Jefferson County languished below its high until now. It must be all the yogic flying in Fairfield and Maharishi Vedic City. (But seriously, the unique culture there is probably the main driver, seeing as though Libertyville school is closing this year.)

Statewide otherwise, the numbers are same-ol-same-ol:

  • Since 2010, Polk, Dallas, Johnson, and Linn counties are estimated to have added 87,886 people. The rest of the state combined has a net gain of 452 — and of those 95 counties, only 23 are on the plus side.
  • In the one-year estimate (7/1/15-7/1/16), those four counties gained nearly 15,000 people while the other 95 lost 2249.
  • 39 counties lost less than 100 people in a year, so it’s not horrible…
  • …until you see that all but six of those 39 have lost more than 100 since the last official census. (And one of the six is Dubuque, whose 2010-16 overall gain is 3350, making it a huge outlier.)
Posted in Iowa Miscellaneous | Comments Off on A county has topped its 1870 population peak
Mar 28

Heads we win, tails you lose

Posted on Tuesday, March 28, 2017, at 10:00 AM by Jeff


July 21, 2012: Current HMS Elementary School in Hartley, formerly Hartley High School. Once again, a beautiful Art Deco school building is facing the challenge of time, cost, and utility.

Hartley-Melvin-Sanborn has issued a challenge to its voters. If a bond issue doesn’t pass April 4, the northwest Iowa school district says it will close a building, KIWA Radio reports.

But the thing is, if the bond issue passes, the elementary in Hartley will close anyway. Twice before, in 2014 when the referendum was rejected with nearly 60% voting no, and last year when it got a majority but not a supermajority (off by 47 votes, says the Sioux City Journal), closing HMS Elementary was a known component of the plan. A new elementary would be built onto the high school at a different location in Hartley. The hedging between “close a building” and “close this building” is curious because the last vote got better results in Sanborn than Hartley.

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Mar 27

Some date edits, and a highway that was legally dead

Posted on Monday, March 27, 2017, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Going through the legal descriptions of Iowa highways — just the state ones, not the US routes — have merited some editing to some pages. Mostly, these are fixes to time spans, now that we have dates of Highway Commission action if not the signs coming down in the field.

In some cases, what’s on the page wasn’t what was on the field. For example, the end of IA 283 was supposed to be a block east of where the “End” sign was. In cases like that I left it alone. On IA 364, the 1980 route log disagrees with the legal route description on whether the end in Harpers Ferry was 2nd or 3rd Street, but for the time being I am leaving that off the page. (More on that, and cases like it, to come.)

Minor changes were made to the following pages: 77, 103, 111, 130, 142, 186, 365, and 394 South. The IA 234 and 245 pages got a little more about their piecemeal decommissionings.

More substantial changes were made to the following:

  • We now have an intersection for the end of IA 246.  There’s some discrepancy as to what street is named what, but the southeast corner of the square was the end of the route.
  • IA 328‘s north end has been corrected to First Street, and the photos with old US 20 moved down the page to be the closest to the city limits, where there was a secret route until 1987.
  • IA 154 was killed off and replaced with an extension of IA 187 Thanksgiving week 1980, a few months after 187 was taken away from its end at Backbone State Park and extended north to IA 3 at Starmont school. That’s why the 1981 map is how it is. All of the new-sign photos at its ends will stay on the 187 page, and it’s possible I may simply combine the two.
  • IA 333 approached its post-2003 endpoint from a different direction in the first few years of its Fremont County life (then it continued with US 275, and then east to US 59). The existence of 333 itself was up for grabs in late 1980 — read the entry on Jason’s site for more. But once it was set, it used Main and E Streets in Hamburg until a project was finished in late 1984. In addition, the legal description appears to say 333 still continues with 275 to the east split at now-J64.
  • IA 341 contained the biggest surprise. Until now, I thought that the little stub between “Old Highway 18” and existing 18 was retained until 2003 because Ruthven wanted a state connection to the city limits, or because the 18 bypass called for it, or because someone simply forgot that that part should have gone to the county. But all of those were wrong. The slight bypass of Ruthven was done in 1966, and the highway was turned over in 1988 — but then in 1993, the state took the stub back! It was never re-signed, but there is a definite break between when the route existed as a signed highway and when it was kept as a secret route.

EDIT: Corrected description of IA 333 information.

Posted in Highway Miscellaneous | Comments Off on Some date edits, and a highway that was legally dead