KCRG led off Sunday night’s newscast (autoplay video) with a story about the closure of the Black Hawk Bridge between Lansing and De Soto, Wisconsin.
The free car ferry to take its place while construction continues on its replacement won’t be up for a month. It’s good there won’t be a long break, but it is peak leaf-peeping season — or in northeast Iowa, just-past-peak leaf-peeping season. That is, if there are leaves worth peeping at, since drought conditions have hurt colors.
Wait a second, you’re saying. We’re into the Q’s of a new cycle. What’s the deal?
Well, the deal is, I saw a vehicle with a ZIC license plate at the airport when I was there Tuesday to play music for the Honor Flight’s return.
This plate should have been flagged for replacement two years ago. Not only that, it had an expired registration sticker to boot!
This is part of why the alphanumerics flipped. Inevitably, something doesn’t go the way it’s supposed to, and the system doesn’t mark down that the vehicle is supposed to need new plates.
When Waterloo East and Waterloo West merge into a new campus in 2028, that school will be called Waterloo United High School. KWWL covered the introduction of the new nickname, wordmark, logo, and colors last Wednesday.
I hate the word “United” in there. I understand it in this specific situation, because like the European soccer teams that call themselves “United,” there is actually a two-becoming-one situation. But “United” smacks of the Europeanization of soccer stuff in this country in the past decade. I probably wouldn’t have even had the same reaction to “Unified” — see the Los Angeles Unified School District.
The graphic elements, meanwhile, feel extremely late 2010s/early 2020s. The primary mark (the trident, er, pentant?) is not necessarily easy to draw, but the monogram would look pretty sweet on a football helmet. So, naturally, that is NOT what will be used on the football helmet; instead it’s a non-beveled version of the primary mark.
The new high school will be built as additions to the existing Central Middle School on Katoski Drive, south of the interchange of University Avenue and Greenhill Road. Longtime residents of the area (or readers of this website) may recall that that school was built as Waterloo Central High School, which only lasted 15 years (1974-88) before being converted to a junior high. That’s why it already has a football field with large sets of concrete bleachers and some extremely dilapidated tennis courts (according to the aerial imagery).
The new school is expected to open in 2028, meaning that this year’s freshmen will be the first “Waterloo United” graduates.
The Black Hawk Bridge at Lansing, a Driftless Area landmark for nearly a century, will close forever at 7 AM on Oct. 20. Stories: Des Moines Register, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, KCRG (short clip), Iowa DOT press release. The original goal was to keep the bridge open while its replacement was built, but that turned out not to be feasible.
Main Street Lansing is having a daylong farewell celebration on Saturday.
The Iowa and Wisconsin DOTs have worked on establishing a car ferry that will cross the river during the closure period until the new bridge opens sometime in 2027. It’s currently pegged for “spring” but we’re talking northeast Iowa here, so there could be hard ground until April followed by a month of mud.
The La Crosse Tribune reports that the cost of the bridge has gone up from $140 million to $160 million. The free ferry will hold up to 12 cars per trip, the Tribune says.
WIZM radio in La Crosse interviewed the Iowa DOT project manager. Clayton Burke told the station then that the current bridge will be removed by the end of this year, although in August he was thinking early 2026.
After US 63 crosses I-70 in Missouri, the contours of the countryside change significantly. Northern Missouri has hills, but in southern Missouri, well, the shortest distance between two points is secondary to the HILLS.
On Aug. 21, the Missouri DOT (MoDOT) had a public meeting/open house on a project proposed so long ago that a new Environmental Impact Statement had to be created. The original EIS from 2009 was reaffirmed this year.
MoDOT wants to extend the four-lane alignment of US 63 south of US 50 and around the town of Westphalia. This would be a complete relocation with one exit, and it’s not at MO 133. MoDOT’s FAQ says “Building an interchange at Route 133 would involve changing the alignment of Route 133, building excessively long ramps, and disrupting more right of way than the current proposal.”
The estimated cost, at least right now, is $83.7 million. It won’t be completed until the end of 2029 at the earliest.
I think the loss of Looney Tunes in the Saturday morning lineup 25 years ago (!) was the beginning of the end of Americans’ shared culture.
A DOT meeting about the US 61 Wapello bypass will be held Wednesday evening, according to a press release from the DOT. At publication time, a PDF was not available. The line on the map shown on the website appears only to go from present 61 south of Wapello to County Road G62, leaving the north half unaccounted for.
The most recent five-year plan has IA 78 to IA 92 included as a single project with multiple entries. The bulk of the grading is to be done in FY27 (2026-27) with paving in FY29-30. That means the bypass and full four-lane US 61 might not be finished until 2031.
Relatedly, via Jason Hancock, via only a Facebook post from the Des Moines County Sheriff’s Department, the Mediapolis bypass opened the day after Labor Day.
The Ames Tribune reports that the eastbound exit and entrance ramps to Dayton Avenue will be closed for seven months next year. Westbound ramps will be closed in 2027.
The closure from April 1 to Nov. 15 is part of an expansion of US 30 to six lanes that also includes replacing the bridges over the Skunk River.
Notably, this will cover most of football season, so there won’t be a tertiary option to get onto eastbound 30. The Duff Avenue exit will start the eastbound detour, via Southeast 16th Street.
This story was entirely dumb luck (stopping at a Marion Kum & Go that was in the process of becoming not-a-Kum-&-Go) followed by the usual “This data set has to exist somewhere. It doesn’t? Guess I have to find out myself.”
That, dear reader, is how I scooped the Des Moines Register and how my work appeared in the print paper (Sept. 8) for the first time since I left there.
(Also the Dickinson County News. Hi there! Thanks for reading!)
In the previous school year (2024-25), the South Page school district resumed sending its upper grades to Clarinda after a short time with Bedford. Last September, shortly after the year began, the two schools agreed to make an extended contract.
A (scanned, non-searchable) PDF on Clarinda’s website spells out the one-way sharing agreement. The agreement is for five school years, 2025-26 to 2029-30. It says it’s for grades “7-12 (PK-6 added as needed),” and that parenthetical phrase appears repeatedly.
“All students will receive a Clarinda diploma.”
