Iowa Highway Ends Annex
Road trips, maps, history, miscellaneous geography, and assorted other time-wasters
Iowa county road shield gallery
Iowa bridge timeline
A graphical timeline of the Missouri and Mississippi River bridges' histories, including openings, closings, significant closures, and toll eras.
History of four-lane roads in Iowa
Month-by-month openings of rural four-lane highways, from the 1940s to the present, with maps every five years.
Highway Evolution
The "single-page" chronologies include every map, in order, with changes listed underneath. The Sioux City, Council Bluffs/Omaha, Waterloo-Cedar Falls, and Tama/Benton maps can be viewed separately or together, or in sequence if you type each of the years in order. Also available is a color-coded set of maps for IA 57 and 58 through the years.
| Waterloo-Cedar Falls (single page) | |||||||
| 1925 | 1933 | 1941 | 1963 | 1978 | 1988 | 1997 | 2006 |
| Sioux City (single page) | |||||||
| 1925 | 1932 | 1943 | 1956 | 1972 | 1990 | 2002 | 2005 |
| Council Bluffs/Downtown Omaha (single page) | |||||||
| 1924 | 1933 | 1940 | 1963 | 1973 | 1982 | 2002 | 2005 |
| Tama and Benton counties (single page) | |||||||
| 1925 | 1934 | 1940 | 1955 | 1975 | 2000 | 2005 | |
| Ottumwa (single page) | |||||||
| 1928 | 1938 | 1958 | 1968 | 1998 | 2008 | ||
| Iowa highways 57 and 58 (maps only) | |||||||
| 1920, 1927, 1932 (2), 1933, 1936, 1969, 1991, 2004 | |||||||
| Fort Dodge | Oskaloosa | Glenwood | |||||
Road trip photo galleries
Photo galleries of some of the longer trips I've made, organized chronologically.
- Construction on IA 330, 2001 and 2002
- Construction on new US 20, October 19, 2002
- Lincoln Highway Photo Gallery, mainly November 2002
- Great Western Iowa Road Trip, March 2003
- May/June 2003 road trips - Mainly along I-29, but some elsewhere in Iowa as well
- Opening of new US 20, August 22, 2003
- Northern Iowa Road Trip, May 2004; also includes pictures from April
- Summer 2004 road pictures, including June 2004 road trip
- 2005 road pictures, including multiple one-day trips
- Houston Bowl trip, December 2005-January 2006
- La Crosse road trip, in the style of Jack Bauer, September 2006
Iowa TV station guide
A project years in the making, this table lists every Iowa county's inclusion on network affiliates, and these maps show the data in a graphical manner. Just what TV stations do you get in Farmington, Atlantic, Lansing, Pocahontas, or Larchwood? The table page includes background and notes on the project; the maps page lists the launch date or year of every station.
Iowa's southern border
It's not straight. There was almost a war over it. And Van Buren County got the short end of the stick all the way around. Read about Sullivan's Line and the war that never (but could have) used the line "Forty-Thirty-five or Fight!" here.
Iowa's northern border
Although it's straightforward today, the northern boundary was not settled until just before Iowa became a state. In addition, the sources I have found can't seem to agree on just WHERE the lines were supposed to be drawn. This page is a study of those various descriptions.
An easy thing to find, right? Depends on who you ask - and if you let Lee County drag it southward. It's in Story County either way, but more than 10 miles northeast or southeast of central Ames, and discussed here.
Ontario: Iowa's eastern neighbor
Canada's farther south than you think. In fact, the UNI-Dome is farther north than the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel and Niagara Falls is just south of Postville. This map superimposes the province over a county outline (that's somewhat close to scale).
Iowa vs. southern New England
Pretend that an athletic rivalry between Independence and Clarinda consumes the nation (or, depending on your point of view, is forced down the nation's throats). The distance between those two towns is slightly larger than the distance between Boston and New York City. (In fact, the east end of US 20 is hundreds of yards away from Fenway Park.) This map moves Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island 21 longitude degrees west to be on top of Iowa with corresponding latitude lines. Driving I-95 from Maine to New Jersey is the equivalent of going from Castalia to Villisca via Belle Plaine, and Hartford is only slightly north of Des Moines (Polk City, to be precise).
A few districts in the Iowa House and many in the Iowa Senate are larger than the state of Rhode Island. See, for example, House District 96, Senate District 29, and Senate District 4 (bonus: Compare Rhode Island to Kossuth County).
Congressional district state maps, statehood to present
Color-coded maps divide Iowa counties by their representation in Congress, a representation that peaked at the turn of the 20th century and has been downhill since. Also included are maps of counties Iowa's four most senior congressmen have served.
Congressional districts by county, statehood to present
Tables list each county's by color, with the same color code as the maps on the other page. Many counties in southeast Iowa stayed in District 1 from statehood to the 1992 redistricting, and others shuffled around nearly every time.
Jeff Morrison's clinched highways
A state-by-state listing of all the interstate and US highways that I have traveled the complete length of (in each state), plus overall percentages of major interstates. The list is a variation on similar listings for me at AARoads.com and Clinched Highway Mapping's websites.
Page created 6/1/05 (as the Iowa Geography Page); last updated 2/11/08