Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

Two developments in the Des Moines suburbs over the past year or so have done two very different things to the first highway that exited the state capital on Grand Avenue. This is the companion to Wednesday’s post.

Waukee’s continued expansion has inadvertently almost restored a short long-abandoned segment of original IA 2.

The clip above is from a construction plan from late 1921/early 1922. (The bid notice for at least part of it ran in the Dallas County Record on September 6, 1921.) The section numbers pin it at the intersection of Ashworth Road and V Avenue L.A. Grant Parkway, which got a stoplight in early 2021, and I learned the hard way that Ashworth is closed east of there right now. The inclusion of this area in the 1920 system was a change from the River to River Road, which used 88th Street and University Avenue. Note the White Pole Road continuing west, through Van Meter, to the Iowa Scenic Byway that has rediscovered the White Pole name.

On the far right is a notation of “Present Road,” which was abandoned after this project. The area that extends north from that former intersection, a shade east of the section line, got new life in late 2020. The city of Waukee approved “Kettlestone Ridge Plat 6”, formerly “Bluestem Plat 2,” south of Tallgrass Lane SE.

A comparison of maps shows SE Bluestem Drive almost, but not quite, on top of where the “present road” on the map clip at top is. The line was closer to the backs of the houses on the east side of the street. The trail on the north side of Tallgrass Lane, in line with the tree line to the west, marks where the east-west connector was. Bluestem dead-ends north of Ashworth, preventing a through path.

Across the street is Timberline school, opened in 2015, which this year has 862 students* in two grades plus a football field encircled by an all-weather eight-lane track. There are Class 1A districts that would sacrifice a couple hundred head of cattle** for a facility like that and the 42-lot development being filled as fast as the contractor can.

To the west of that, even, is the opening-this-week Sugar Creek Elementary, west of County Road R22 (the Booneville exit) and located on the part of Ashworth Road that was gravel a decade ago.

*Equivalent to the 128th-largest district in the state, between Van Meter and Denver.
**Not literally. Well, probably not literally.

Two developments in the Des Moines suburbs over the past year or so have done two very different things to the first highway that exited the state capital on Grand Avenue.

Val Lanes concrete, 1921-2021

The 1948 blueprint above shows a connection from Grand Avenue to Ashworth Road that no longer exists. The 18-foot concrete was in all likelihood paved in 1921, when Ashworth was paved west from here to the Polk/Dallas county line. It was primarily part of IA 2, but also carried IA 17 (and for a short time IA 7) in the original primary system. It was still around as recently as October 2020, when I photographed it, and it’s a good thing I did, because it’s now gone.

In the spring of 2021, a new building for Erik’s Bike Board Ski and its parking lot took out what was left of the concrete connection. The building came about in relation to West Des Moines expanding Grand Avenue in the area, from IA 28 to 4th Street last year and 4th to 14th this year. If any original paving on Grand was buried, it’s gone now.

The West Des Moines Oil Co. occupied a popular spot for a gas station; the space is now a Casey’s.