Crossing Iowa, part one.
At the end of March I left the Great Plains, crossed over the Missouri River from Omaha to Council Bluffs and started my drive across the Hawkeye State, Iowa.
My goal has been to blog the drive eastward but only to where I started in early February, namely Illinois (where I got on Route 66 in Joliet) on the other side of the Mississippi. That means that this post and the two Iowa posts to come will be it; they will take us across the state along the Lincoln Highway to eastern Iowa. That was my loop: I started in Joliet in early February where Route 66 and the Lincoln Highway meet, took the Mother Road all the way to southern California, cut up to the SF Bay Area and after some R&R there I got back on the road to follow the path of the Lincoln Highway heading east. At DeWitt in the eastern part of Iowa just shy of the Mississippi I got off the Lincoln, headed down to Davenport and crossed the river on the interstate. I headed back to Joliet on I-80 to close the loop.
Iowa. The thing about the drive across the state was its extraordinary ordinariness. Farms and country roads, classic main streets (with stores still open for business), Carnegie libraries, historic city halls, red barns galore, beautiful countryside (if still a little bleak in the late winter rain and drizzle just about the entire drive), churches, vintage movie theaters, diners, beautiful old houses and some very fine stretches of the old highway. JC’s Dairy Den! The Pink Poodle diner! Maid-Rite! Iowa State University (go Cyclones)! The Quaker Oats Company! It was a fitting end to a long drive.
Are you Bill Bryson readers? He’s from Des Moines. For anyone reading this who was born before around 1960, I recommend The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid about growing up in Iowa in the 1950s. It’s a really fun read.
I digress again. Like a lot of places on my long drive Iowa was a little lost in time. Unlike some other states the little towns along the way in Iowa aren’t quite so challenged (as they are along the Lincoln in Nebraska or along Route 66 in Oklahoma, for example). In large part Main Street is still open for business, and it seems to be better cared for, too. Some of the Lincoln Highway cities and towns seem to be struggling but they aren’t as devastated as they are in so many other places on the drive – indeed, there were vacant storefronts, but then again that’s something one sees just about everywhere in all too many small towns in America these days and not just in the Midwest. It was nothing like where I had just arrived from, namely Nebraska, however; there were people out and about, and there was commerce. You won’t see so many people in the pictures, but understand that the weather was cold and miserable! I shot a lot of these in the rain.
I hope you enjoy these Iowa pix. It wasn’t until Iowa that I felt I had finally found Main Street America. In the Hawkeye State. I’d like to see Iowa again in the spring or with fall colors and do a little more exploring.
Here’s the first leg of the Iowa drive.
In this first Iowa post, we’ll start out in Council Bluffs, just across the river from Omaha. I didn’t spend a lot of time there; I had a fair amount of driving ahead of me in wet driving conditions and didn’t linger. The Carnegie Library there – just across the street from the City Building, one our very few Iowa deco buildings in these posts – is the home of the Union Pacific Museum but I did not visit. The actual eastern terminus of the first Transcontinental Railroad was Council Bluffs. “Mile 0” is at 21st Street and 9th Avenue. Along with Omaha it has been an important rail center, although not as much now as in the past.
From Council Bluffs I took the “Old Lincoln Highway” to where it meets US 30 at Missouri Valley. In this set we’ll follow US 30 – the path of the Lincoln Highway through Iowa – all the way to Ames, the home of Iowa State University which was my destination for my first overnight in Iowa.
I had a long walkabout on the Iowa State campus. Mercifully, the rain finally let up. It is a handsome and historic campus. It was established in 1858 and was the nation’s first land-grant institution under the 1852 Morrill Act. Read more here.
The route of the Lincoln Highway is right along the edge of the campus and is called Lincoln Way.
I also had a look around the very pleasant Main Street Cultural District in the Ames downtown (the last eight photos after leaving the Iowa State Campus). I then headed back to Lincoln Way with one more stop in Ames for that shot of the Ames Motor Lodge.
It was on to Nevada (Iowa) from there which is where we will start out in the next post.
