A vehicle passes a construction crew picking up traffic cones on eastbound U.S. Highway 30 near the Iowa Highway 21 exit north of Belle Plaine, Iowa, Tuesday, October 15, 2024. The segment of U.S. 30 between Iowa 21 and County Road V44 was the last in a nearly 150-mile-long span to open to four lanes. Photo by author.

The 16-minute movie from the Iowa State Highway Commission in 1960 was a key component in the state’s public relations strategy for a critical section of U.S. 30. From Ogden east to Iowa Highway 330, the rural highway had not been changed since original 18-foot-wide paving in the Lincoln Highway days. A concrete railroad overpass just east of Nevada dated back to 1923. (It would not be replaced until 1973. A narrow underpass a couple hundred yards away remains to this day.) While we now can appreciate the wide array of car makes and colors in the film, the volume of traffic was an important visual aid to pushing for an all-new road that skirted Ogden, Boone, Ames, Nevada, Colo, and State Center. At the time, the proposed relocation was mostly two lanes.

The Ames bypass would not be finished until nearly a decade after the rest of the new road had opened — fall 1972. Wrapping up the connection on the west end was prolonged after weather delays including the blizzard of April 8-10, 1973.

Through the turn of the century, only about a third of the 100 miles between I-35 and I-380 were upgraded, mostly south and west of Cedar Rapids.

A photograph of a page from a May 1968 plan shows a proposed four-lane U.S. Highway 30 in Benton County that, in the eastern half of the county, would have dipped half a mile south of the existing road. When U.S. 30 was upgraded to four lanes east of the U.S. Highway 218 junction in 1992 and 1999, it followed the existing road instead. To the west, in the segments that opened in 2024, the four-lane is just a few hundred feet south of the original.

If the state’s plan from 1999 had been carried out, the gap from Marshalltown to U.S. 218 would have been closed by 2005 and finished in eastern Linn County shortly thereafter. Instead, it took until 2024.

A very small ribbon-cutting ceremony was held for the U.S. Highway 30 Tama-Toledo bypass at the west end of that bypass August 13, 2011, in Toledo, Iowa. The four-lane road is the fourth alignment of the highway here since 1926. Photo by author.

The U.S. 30 bypass of Mount Vernon/Lisbon from west of Wilcox Road in Linn County to Charles Avenue in Cedar County will be open to traffic late Friday afternoon, Nov. 22, weather permitting … .
— Iowa DOT press release, Nov. 18, 2019

Tama County’s “Bohemian Alps” before 4-land Hwy 30.  Photo by Prairie Rivers of Iowa

The final section had to cut through Tama County’s Bohemian Alps. These rolling hills are why the Lincoln Highway originally dipped southward to Belle Plaine. It made for a scenic drive whenever you weren’t trailing a semi, but that wasn’t often.

This segment of U.S. 30 has a relative rarity for Iowa travelers: 45 miles and no gas stations (or restrooms). The route had once been peppered with them, including the historic Youngville station, which was at risk of being demolished in the 1990s but has been preserved. Cedar Rapids Gazette columnist Dave Rasdal wrote about the lack of stops in 1994. The gas station at the Luzerne corner (County Road V44) closed a few years after a manager was shot and killed there. Today, for a fill-up visible from the highway, there’s nothing between Toledo and southwest Cedar Rapids. 

Youngville Station when the Lincoln Highway/Highway 30 was the main east-west route across Iowa and after restoration and now accessed by exiting the 4-lane Highway 30 at Highway 218 west of Cedar Rapids.

…until the Iowa DOT puts at least one and maybe up to three roundabouts on the south side of Boone.

My other work can be found on my website, Iowa Highway Ends, and its blog.

–Jeff Morrison

Between Two Rivers