ISU fans shout a big Oh boy
Save us from the Land of Misfit Toys
The Longhorns and Sooners have wandering eyes
They’ll say goodbyes
‘Cause there’s the smell of money
And the people bowed and prayed
ESPN rules the college land
It doesn’t care about the marching bands
Or academics, just the shiny golden beams
‘Cause there’s the smell of money
Welcome to the Third Big 12 Missile Crisis, Iowa State. Here’s your water pistol.
(vaguely related: RIP Capitol Steps)
The final design for the replacement of the Black Hawk Bridge over the Mississippi River at Lansing … looks a lot like the old bridge, except as a unified piece. The “Blue Alternative” is slightly upstream of the present bridge, and roadway connections between old and new will require closing everything for three months.
The input meeting was last month, and I didn’t get a post in. It’s a continuation of the process I noted four years ago. There’s an online “self-guided tour” of the project. A line from the extremely long environmental assessment says, “The new river crossing would include a solid, hard surface bridge deck and a shoulder that could accommodate pedestrian/bicycle use.”
Construction of the $80.8 million bridge is scheduled for fiscal 2024, so starting in the second half of 2023. By the time of its completion, the Centennial Bridge in Davenport (1940) will be Iowa’s oldest bridge on the Mississippi River carrying a highway.
While looking through old blog posts related to the Iowa State Fair I noticed that a link I had in one of them had 404’d.
The band Redhead Express, a four-sister act I happened to catch in 2018, disbanded the following year. I learned this through a few minutes of searching online and coming across a website by one of its former members.
Had we not disbanded when we did, I’m pretty sure we might have been stranded on the road somewhere with all of our gigs canceled and no way to fund the trip back home!
The band member, Kendra Stevenson, moved on to her next gig: being a mom. However, perhaps due to her admitted writer’s block, the only post on her blog is the introductory one linked above from November.
Vinton is a larger town than you might think. By that, I mean it has a population above 5,000, but because the highways are only in the west and middle, much of it is residential areas where travelers don’t go. (I include myself in that group, given the umpteen dozen times I’ve gone through.)
I thought I had pegged the 1920 route of IA 40 pretty easily, as the pre-bypass that skirted the west side of its original core downtown on C Avenue and 4th Street. However, a recently digitized document at the Iowa DOT website, filed under “early roads”, disproved that. It turns out that like with other cities’ business districts at the time, “close” took a back seat to “through”. Instead of C, 40 used A Avenue, two blocks east.
A three-paragraph item in the Cedar Valley Daily Times May 22, 1929, says:
The C Avenue project is on highway 218 and will connect with 4th street on the north and 13th street on the south, which, with the paving now in progress connecting up Vinton to La Porte City, completes the surfacing of No. 218 through Benton county, with the exception of the few rods at the Milwaukee track crossing south of Vinton, which have been proved with a temporary crushed rock surface.
At the time, 13th Street was the south side of town. South of there, though, part of the way to the Lincoln Highway was paved in 1921, and the rest in the fall of 1927. (The same contractor that paved in August 1921 immediately went south to Belle Plaine, where a short stretch of concrete Lincoln Highway opened Nov. 12.)
In the 1920s, cities and not the state controlled where routes went within city limits. Therefore, I wouldn’t be able to point to a change date unless it’s mentioned in the newspaper archives, which it is not. What I can say is that in 1920, IA 40 used A Avenue, and by the end of 1929, US 218 used C Avenue.
This re-evaluation of IA 40 also changes the 1920 endpoints of IA 58 and IA 101. The former’s redundant multiplex from the IA 8 intersection was dropped in 1924. The latter, with this new information, now first ended on southbound A Avenue at 4th Street, where a driver could continue ahead on southbound 40 or turn right on northbound 40. The information on the IA 58 (1920) and IA 101 pages has been changed accordingly, along with explanation of the 2012 picture’s position.
October 27, 2018
After Iowa State’s 40-31 Homecoming victory over Texas Tech, we looked at the decorations on campus. The preceding pictures were chalk on Victory Lane, so I’m posting this instead, which was near the stadium entrance. This, like much of the Homecoming stuff, is a collaboration of Greek system groups. Notice the Wendy Wintersteen “stamp” in the corner — although, technically, it should be on the other side.
At the time of this writing, it is the most recent Iowa State football game I have been able to attend, and the last event at which all family members were present.
June 26, 2009: This sweet old sign on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, will have to come down, if it hasn’t already. Notice the faint markings of a previous interstate shield under the DC-marked I-395 shield.
The AASHTO’s Special Committee on Route Numbering, in its fall meeting, approved new designations for much of the interstate system inside the District of Columbia. (h/t AARoads)
The northernmost part of what was I-395, with a tunnel under the Capitol Reflecting Pool and ending at US 50/New York Avenue, will become I-195. The I-395 designation will be continued eastward on the Southeast Freeway, which has been I-695 since the formation of the interstate system but was only signed in 2011. The extended I-395 will terminate at the Anacostia Freeway, which runs south of this junction as I-295 and north of there as “state highway” DC 295. (DC 295 does not rejoin any interstate, but terminates at the DC/MD line and becomes MD 201.) This means one interchange will be the terminus for two three-digit interstates, and DC I-695 will be no more.
Since I-295 is more of a spur to Anacostia, it should have had an odd number. Further renumbering would probably create more confusion, considering that this is being done because drivers don’t know their maps. (Drivers not knowing their maps seems to be an increasing problem.) Also, since there’s an I-195 about 30 miles away nearby serving BWI airport, I-595 might have been a better idea for the Capitol tunnel spur, and almost unique; the only I-595 is in southern Florida.
WTOP Radio has more information, with pictures. The reporter seems to be pretty roadgeeky, as he uses all the right terminology, made a tweet about speculative exits with the Freeway font, and wrote about a discovery in 2018 of an ancient sign that pointed to a “ghost road”.
I had traveled — but not been the driver on — about 40% of DC’s interstates. It appears I will have to brave the world inside the Beltway to clinch the renumbered routes.
From the Iowa DOT and Corydon Times-Republican:
Also in Iowa DOT news, the message board slogans plus year-to-date traffic fatalities update have moved to Fridays from Mondays. The state is moving the day of the week for these as a lead-in to weekends and long holidays to catch commuters’ and travelers’ eyes. It’s a reasonable rationale.
Sure, a lot of things didn’t happen in the past year and change. One thing that didn’t happen, though, is unique.
In 2020-21, for the first time in the 55-year modern era of Iowa school districts, no community lost its only school building.
This revelation from my school timeline hinges on a few circumstances:
In my timeline, I try to note when a replacement building comes in one town or make clear through context that it’s not a city’s only school in those cases. I’m pondering if there is a better way to delineate those.
Be on the lookout for much more this month about Iowa schools.
Tama County’s festivals are back this year, and three of them will offer a chance to polka until you drop. Barefoot Becky and the Ivanhoe Dutchmen will be making three appearances: Tuesday, July 6, in Clutier, starting at 7 PM (note this is four days before the Bohemian Plum Festival); Friday, July 9, in Toledo, 5-6:30 PM; and Friday, August 13, in Traer, 4-6 PM.
June 5, 2014: The oldest portion of the Newell-Fonda Community School opened on February 5, 1912. “The new building marks an era of progress in the Newell schools. In coming years, it will be a monument of foresight of the men who built it.” (Newell Mirror, February 1, 1912)
The building currently at the heart of the Newell-Fonda school complex got there the old-fashioned way: The previous one burned down.
SCHOOL BUILDING DESTROYED
Uncontrollable flames totally obliterated the brick school building on Saturday evening — probably will resume school work next Monday.
If one could forget the heavy loss involved and the almost inestimable detriment to the school, it would have been a magnificent sight when the building was wrapped in flames. The fire burned fiercely while the woodwork was destroyed. All that remains of the building is the blackened and crumbling walls. There were twenty tons of coal in the basement which is still burning. The walls are lighted up at night with a red glare like a ghostly jack lantern.
— Newell Mirror, February 9, 1911
And that, kids, is why school buildings in the first two-thirds of the 20th century were stuffed chock full of asbestos.
To my knowledge, the 1912 Newell school building is one of and quite possibly THE oldest of the early-20th-century multistory, symmetrical flat-roofed schools in use in small-town Iowa today (but not the oldest overall). The building was even a bit ahead of its time, as I tend to peg the era as 1913-28. Bagley’s school built the following year still included a bell tower.
As you can see in the picture, it’s firmly wedged in between much later additions, but is that going to change? A story in the Storm Lake Times says the Newell-Fonda district is looking into adding capacity in 2023. “Central tower,” as the superintendent calls the 1912 structure, currently houses certain specialty and extracurricular classes. A study will be conducted on central tower, which could result in either its demolition (which would leave a hole in the complex!) or Americans With Disabilities Act compliance (which at minimum means an elevator).
Either way, it’s not going anywhere in its upcoming 110th full year of operation, so take that, Locust School.
