(July 1, 1920-November 1958)
- In 1920, they knew it as: Marion's consolation booby prize for losing the Lincoln Highway. NO ONE called this route by its number. A search for the phrase "Primary Road No. 94" turns up eight hits in Cedar Rapids papers in the 1920s. The Mount Vernon Hawkeye-Record and Lisbon Herald had zero references to "Highway 94". There are fewer than two dozen references to "Primary Road No. 94" or "Highway 94" in Marion Sentinel stories before 1940.
- We know it as: As of 2011, the signed Marion loop of the Lincoln Highway Historic Byway, and some city streets, as seen in Jason Hancock's Highways of Cedar Rapids.
- Let's get granular: 13th Street, 5th Avenue, 31st Street, and Munier Road in Marion; a short segment that IA 100 was later placed on top of; parts of Big Bluestem Drive, Banner Drive, and Golf Course Road (now dead end) at Squaw Creek Park; Bloomington Road (including a short vacated diagonal east of IA 13); E48/Mount Vernon Road; Old Lincoln Highway near Cornell College and 1st Street in Mount Vernon
- The 2011 Lincoln Highway Heritage Byway loop route uses 3rd Avenue and 35th Street. This cannot be accurate, because that part of 3rd Avenue did not exist until the middle of the century.
- The Big Bluestem Drive bridge over Squaw Creek is the very bridge built for IA 94 in 1926.
NORTHWEST End: IA 28, now 13th Street at 7th Avenue, Marion, Linn County
Marion City Park is two blocks west of where 94 first ended. (8/24/13)
IA 94 is the end product of Marion (1920 pop. 4138, 2010 pop. 39,979) losing Iowa's last great county seat battle.
Linn County overwhelmingly voted for good roads on June 16, 1919, setting into motion a paving program that included "The Lincoln Highway Cedar Rapids 'cutoff' from seedling mile." Marion lost a vote to retain its status as a county seat the following November. The cutoff, today known as Mount Vernon Road, the first rural paved road in Linn County after the Seedling Mile, opened October 1, 1921, and much more detail can be found in the Iowa DOT's "Seedling Mile in Linn County" PDF. The Lincoln Highway was paved through Cedar County in 1927 to make a continuous strip of concrete from Tama to the Mississippi River. The Lincoln Highway northwest to Marion would never be paved.
The final indignity to Marion would come in October 1925, when Chief Engineer Fred White wrote to the Bureau of Public Roads: "You will note that I have indicated that we desire to have removed from the U.S. Highway system about five or six miles extending southeasterly from Marion and that we desire to have added in lieu thereof about five or six miles (as shown in red) extending directly east from Cedar Rapids."
This diagram on an interpretive panel at the west end of Cedar Rapids (#8) shows the iterations of the Lincoln Highway in Linn County. (8/24/13) IA 94's route was from where the Lincoln split from present Business 151 southeast to Mount Vernon. In 1924, it was cut to the intersection just north of the Seedling Mile. Building the Seedling Mile in this location served both the original Lincoln Highway and the cutoff, and being away from Cedar Rapids, gave a stark comparison for travelers experiencing this vs. the unimproved rural road they had to take to get here.
SOUTHEAST End (2): IA 6, now Mount Vernon Road/E48, Linn County
It might not look like much, but what you see here has layers of meaning. This is the start of the Seedling Mile; the road built in 2002 replaced what had been here for 93 years. The compromise for modernization with historic integrity resulted in concrete, not asphalt, being used on the mile, with scoring to show the narrower width of the original. That's the line to the left of the date. (7/6/13)
Imagine taking your Hupmobile across this baby in northeast Mount Vernon. (7/6/13)
SOUTHEAST End (1): 1st St. at 1st Ave., Mount Vernon, Linn County
| Designations for the Mount Vernon Road diagonal, including Seedling Mile segment | ||
| FROM | TO | HIGHWAYS |
| 10/31/13 | 7/1/20 | Lincoln Highway (and to present, especially after LHA revival) |
| 7/1/20 | 11/3/24 | IA 6 (I) and IA 94 (I) |
| 11/3/24 | 10/16/26 | IA 6 (I) |
| 10/16/26 | 9/4/41 |
US 30 |
| 9/4/41 | 11/10/53 | US 30 and IA 150 (IV) |
| 11/10/53 | Nov. 1958 | IA 94 (I) |
| Nov. 1958 | 11/24/65 | IA 150 (IV) (Bloomington Road segment dropped in 1961) |
| 11/24/65 | 8/5/80 | Unsigned IA 974 |
| 8/5/80 | Present | E48, and since 2011, Lincoln Highway Heritage Byway |
Facing east, more or less, on 94 (7/6/13)
Although present-day IA 1 between Iowa City and Anamosa is part of the very first road in Iowa, it didn't become part of the state system until 1930! But it would have made complete sense for 94 to end at the junction of the "Military Road" because it's in the heart of Mount Vernon. A block behind the camera is the Lincoln Cafe ("Honest Food") because 1st Street is the Lincoln Highway.
Page created 3/27/20; last updated 2/10/21