Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

(This has been percolating for a while, and the changes have been made. I figured I’d better push it out by the end of the year.)

Active highways:

• I’ve had the west end of IA 24 in New Hampton dated incorrectly since I created the page, based on information available at the time. It changed from Pleasant Hill Avenue to Linn Avenue when relocated US 63 opened July 31, 1963 (New Hampton Tribune, August 1).
• I’ve also had Dennis Swanson’s name misspelled at the top of the IA 24 page since I created it. Mea culpa.
• The IA 12 page has been modified to reflect Hawarden’s street names, in conjunction with research for a blog post.

1920 highway series:

• Gobs of stuff on IA 6 (Lincoln Highway), including elimination of a part in Boone County that was changed in 1914.
• The Red Ball Route in Cedar Rapids used SW 16th Avenue between J and C streets. That auto trail’s segment between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City became IA 11/40 in 1920. After the Iowa Highway Commission changed the highways to use Bowling Street instead of J Street in late 1923, the president of the Red Ball Route Association wrote to the Cedar Rapids Gazette to complain that the auto trail markers were moved to the new route without authorization.
• I learned more recently that even after the change to Bowling, there was a “hiccup” in the route between Wilson Avenue and C Street for a while because Bowling did not exist between the two. It opened months before the US highway system came into effect.
• IA 11 originally used Main Street in Center Point. It was not changed to the present road until paving in 1930. The connection back is unclear, because the relevant page in the blueprints does not have street names. It was either Washington or Vine.
• I was right on the original route of IA 11 in Washington: Madison Street, Avenue D, Washington Street, and Marion Avenue. It passed through the town square a block east of the courthouse. However, the same Washington Democrat-Independent article (August 21, 1938) that confirmed the first route showed I was wrong on the date of the diagonal on the north side of town. It didn’t come until 1940, in conjunction with the Second Avenue underpass. Although paving on IA 1 was done in the Washington area in 1927, that was on Marion Avenue, and today it’s all within the city limits.
• The ancient IA 14 route in the Greene area that used a bridge from 1905 was severed just last year, when the bridge was permanently closed.
• New/new-to-me in the DOT archives is a set of blueprints dated 1917 (!) for Federal Aid Project No. 2 in Woodbury County. Although this number is typically associated with original US 20, it also originally applied to IA 34/IA 141/IA 982 between Sioux City and Smithland.
  • The Woodbury County supervisors passed a resolution on June 16, 1917, designating part of its “intercounty road system” for improvement.
  • The work in the blueprints was not carried out until 1922-24, so the original pieces I’ve extracted weren’t part of the primary system for long.
  • IA 23 in Moville: The plan has the original IA 23 route using 150th Street, which was changed in 1924 over the objections of the county supervisors and Moville businesses (Sioux City Journal, 2/19/23 and 7/24/24).
  • IA 31 in Smithland: There were two possibilities for the route between the century-old bridge at State and Walnut and the current south end, and I chose the incorrect one. Instead of a one-turn option that passed the school, it used a three-turn route with the one block of Washington Street between State and Main. This means IA 31’s south end, assuming it was signed to the business district, was at the same intersection as today, but facing east instead of south.
  • IA 34: A few more “nips-and-tucks” vs. today’s D25 are listed, including a piece past an off-the-beaten-path church that was on the path at first.
• The “end table” on the IA 12 (1920) page got an overhaul for the entire 1926-55 time period on both ends. I realized I overlooked some changes to US 20 in Sioux City that, in all likelihood, affected 12’s south end over those 30 years. Then I also updated the current IA 12 page.
  • I had a note about the reroute of IA 12/29 in Sioux City in my Highway Commission minutes research since 2006. It was October 29, 1929. Thanks, me!
  • 1929 had lots of changes in the Sioux City area, and parts remain clouded. The extension of US 77 through Sioux City into South Dakota was approved on the national level in June of that year, but what’s still unknown is whether the route used Military Road for a few months before moving to Riverside Drive.
  • There is a photo in the DOT’s archive of IA 12, IA 29, US 20, and US 77 shields in downtown Sioux City. To get the location, I tracked down a business in the photo, and … “D.D.T. 5 per cent, new miracle spray, kills insects. $3 gallon. LINCOLN SEED AND FEED CO., 3rd and Pearl.” (Sioux City Journal, September 19, 1945)
• IA 24 did use Salem Avenue in Indianola to start out with, and on November 19, 1929, the Highway Commission approved the relocation to 2nd Avenue when paving was complete. That was also in my very first notes from 2006. Thanks, me!
• I have revised and refined the original route of IA 24 between Winterset and Pleasantville. The Winterset-to-Martensdale portion overlapped with IA 15.
• Century-old blueprints covering IA 2 in central/eastern Dallas County got me to re-enter the routings there. The road was off 88th Street and University Avenue earlier than I thought, since the change was not noted in the 1914 county map.
• Said revision also affected IA 17, and I took another look at that route in Warren County, too. Paving documents also appear to point to Harding Drive (which aside from part that’s now a driveway is so vacated as to not really exist anymore) on the north side of Pleasantville.
• A piece of concrete near the intersection of Grand Avenue and 1st/63rd streets that I photographed in 2020 vanished mere months later. See this blog post.
• I think I’ve figured out how IA 99 originally got through Camanche.