The gribblenation.com website is one of the older surviving roadgeek-related websites, currently with five contributors.
One of the contributors, who had very little experience in Iowa, drove a mix of old and new US 20 across the state last year and made a blog post about it in March.
The Iowa Transportation Commission released its draft 2021-25 five-year construction plan at its meeting earlier this month.
I guess I can’t really call it in analysis if I’m just condensing the existing information? Anyway, here are current estimated completions (in fiscal years) for the big stuff, with some extrapolations:
IA 14 will be closed between IA 96 and IA 175 this summer for a concrete overlay project starting next week, a press release from the DOT says.
The official detour uses T29 between 96 and 14.
The work technically starts north of the Liscomb corner (former end of IA 311), half a mile north of IA 96’s west end. If you are going between western and southern destinations (say, Eldora to Marshalltown), you can take S75 and E18 instead.
The designated hitter rule is coming to the National League for the first time this year. It will vanish again in 2021 in the NL, with the division and league schedules reverting back to their traditional ways, but beginning in 2022, under a new collective bargaining agreement, the universal DH will be here to stay.
December 18, 2006: Based on archaeological evidence found in 2020, this photo’s position is practically on top of a War of 1812-era fort. IA 2’s east end was moved west after the opening of the US 61 bypass.
About a month ago, reported the Burlington Hawk Eye:
Contractors removing soil on Avenue H, in front of the now defunct Sheaffer Pen Co., unearthed artifacts and construction materials from what may have been the first European settlement site in Iowa.
The “first settlement” is the original Fort Madison, built in 1908 and abandoned in 1813. (Julien Dubuque was here earlier, but there was no village of Dubuque until later.)
The photos show Avenue H completely torn up near the BNSF river bridge. Until 2013, this was part of US 61, so the city is doing what I suspect are much-needed improvements.
It is with heavy heart that the Citizens of Reinbeck 4th of July Committee and Reinbeck City Council have jointly decided not to have this years July 4th festivities.
UPDATE: Dysart cancelled last week.
October 23, 2019: An interpretive panel about Henry Ostermann, a Lincoln Highway Association official who died in a car accident east of Montour, was placed in Tama County in 2019.
A press release from Prairie Rivers of Iowa (linked here via Tama-Toledo News) says the group has received an award from the National Scenic Byway Foundation for its interpretive panels on the Lincoln Highway Heritage Byway. Prairie Rivers has set up 20 panels on the route so far.
The Centerville Daily Iowegian, Pella Chronicle, and Knoxville News-Sentinel, all of which have been around for about a century and a half, have become victims of the coronavirus.
The first, which stopped publishing a Monday paper 14 months ago and stopped publishing a Thursday paper six weeks ago, will be folded into the Ottumwa Courier, a daily. The other two will go to the Oskaloosa Herald, which became a twice-weekly paper after also cutting Thursdays at the beginning of April. At the same time, the Herald’s publisher is retiring.
This means that Iowa’s 39th, 57th, and 69th-largest communities (based on 2018 estimates), and two county seats, will not have their own newspaper.
Since the beginning of 1989, the Iowegian billed itself as “the newspaper that cares about Appanoose County.” Sadly, caring doesn’t keep the lights on.
UPDATE: I have been told that the Ottumwa Courier isn’t a daily newspaper anymore. The most recent circulation I can find for it is just above 6000. The Iowegian was down to 1000.
December 25, 2018: The former (and most famous) home of the Traer Star-Clipper, downtown Traer.
“It is with extreme modesty that we take upon us the duty of editor, for we feel that its paths are not always paths of pleasantness and peace, nor its duties, duties of delightfulness; but with the help of other power which we believe will come in time, we feel safe in venturing out on the waves of the editorial sea. If we are wrong, it will only make the waves dash higher to lecture, for it is now too late — one thing that will quiet the waves is to come up now and then and encourage rather than discourage. We mean to try and run a paper that will correspond with a common person’s pocket-book — little, but lively — not only in form but in finance.”
— E.E. Taylor, Traer Star, Vol. 1, No. 1, May 1, 1878
The Traer Clipper was established in 1874; the Traer Star was founded in 1878. The Clipper building was destroyed in a fire on Christmas Eve 1878; “its proprietors though somewhat discouraged soon had new presses and material on hand.” (History of Tama County, 1879) For a few years the Clipper was half-owned by future U.S. representative and agriculture secretary James “Tama Jim” Wilson. Elmer Taylor, founder of the Star, took control of the merged Traer Star-Clipper, and he and/or his son remained in charge for a century.
Now the nameplate is fading into history. The inevitable has arrived.
Ogden Newspapers, a West Virginia company that owns all the weeklies in Tama County plus the Marshalltown Times-Republican, Fort Dodge Messenger, and Webster City Freeman-Journal, is folding six papers into three.
The Traer Star-Clipper and the Dysart Reporter are becoming the North Tama Telegraph. This would be a fine name for a paper in 1883. Today, though, it seems like an attempt to connect to a history it doesn’t have. Because the editor’s position is vacant at this time, there is no online story.
The Gladbrook Northern Sun-Print and Reinbeck Courier are becoming the Sun Courier. The Tama News-Herald and Toledo Chronicle are becoming the Tama-Toledo News Chronicle.
Just because you know something is bound to happen doesn’t make it any easier when it does. 🙁
As covered here, here, and here, the school building in Mallard was a victim of declining enrollment in the West Bend-Mallard school district in northwest Iowa.
The Emmetsburg News website has an eight-paragraph story about the school, ending with the phrase “the demolition we have today.” It might be partially a metaphor, but I was expecting the building to come down this school year, so I’ll count that.
The story, more a reminiscence/appreciation really, also mentions West Bend and Mallard began sharing in 1991-92.
