Time Machine: Linn County’s Seedling Mile

Less than 800 automobiles were registered in Iowa in 1905. Ten years later, that number was more than 147,000.

With the number of cars multiplying, the Iowa Official Transcontinental Route Association was formed in 1910 to lay out the shortest, flattest and most reasonable road through Iowa.

A Cedar Rapids branch of the association was formed on May 26, 1911, by the Commercial Club, followed by Marion and Mount Vernon associations a day later.

At each meeting, speakers pushed for community involvement in the good roads program, citing benefits to individuals businesses, governments and the state.

The state association's annual meetings were often plagued by rain, which turned the route's dirt roads into muddy quagmires, limiting attendance.

W.G. 'Billy” Haskell, president of the association, was also the first person to own a car in Cedar Rapids. He took a Gazette reporter with him when he drove to an association meeting in Ames in 1912, but the majority of attendees made it there by train to avoid the mud.

A month later, in July 1912, the Iowa Transcontinental was chosen to be part of the Transcontinental National Highway from New York to San Francisco.

A.L. Westergard, tourmaster for the American Automobile Association, selected the route because it was the most direct and the most level.

Lincoln Highway

In 1913, Carl Fisher, president of the Presto-Lite Co., came up with the idea of a road crossing the country in the shortest, most direct route that was well-maintained and marked for travelers. He interested some Detroit businessmen in the project and the Transcontinental National road became the basis for the Lincoln Highway (later Highway 30), named as a memorial to President Abraham Lincoln.

The Lincoln Highway Association viewed the vast expanses of dirt and gravel along the rural sections of highway as less than adequate. It began a contest in 1914 to give free cement to pave a mile of road in each county along the route that showed the greatest amount of work on the highway.

The thinking was that if rural motorists could experience driving on one paved 'seedling mile,” they would lobby for more paving across the country.

The winning county's roadway had to be six miles from a population center, and the community had to pay for labor and equipment as well as freight charges for the cement.

Barrels of cement

When 8,000 barrels of cement were allotted to Iowa, state consul (delegate) W.F. Coan decided to divide it into four parts, with groups of counties competing for 2,000 barrels.

The first group of counties was Clinton, Cedar and Linn. Second was Benton, Tama and Marshall. Third was Story, Boone and Greene. And fourth was Carroll, Crawford, Harrison and Pottawattamie.

Fifteen blocks of paving in Mount Vernon, 3.5 miles of paving in Marion, 3 miles of permanently graded roads between Marion and Mount Vernon, three major paving projects in Cedar Rapids and a mile in Kenwood, along with bridge improvements, won the prize for Linn County.

Rural roads terrible

By 1918, though, no improvements had yet been made to the highway outside the city limits of Cedar Rapids, Marion or Mount Vernon.

Linn County had spent a lot of money on new bridges and culverts, but the rural sections of the highway had a reputation as being the worst in the state. The dirt surface was said to be 'dragged when the farmers haven't anything else to do.”

On July 1, 1918, the Linn Board of Supervisors approved paying $2,295.90 to the C&NW Railway Co. to bring in cement for the Seedling Mile.

Seedling mile

Edward Killian, as the county consul for the Lincoln Highway Association, arranged to have 17 carloads of cement shipped, two carloads at a time. When the sacks arrived, they were stored in barns along the route.

The Board of Supervisors immediately began a plan to raise funds for more paving adjoining the Seedling Mile, offering $1 for every $1 raised.

The site chosen for the Linn County Seedling Mile was between Cedar Rapids and Mount Vernon - 6 miles east of Cedar Rapids, at a Y corner (about 2.5 miles east of Highway 13), that would continue for a mile toward Mount Vernon.

Bids were opened for a 'Seedling Mile of Paving” on the Lincoln Highway on July 22, 1918. All the bids were rejected as too high, and the bid-letting process started over. The second set of bids, opened Aug. 2, was also high.

Rather than let the bids again, State Highway Commissioner Thomas MacDonald - along with Edward Killian, W.P. Powell and Samuel Armstrong, representing the Lincoln Highway Association and the Chamber of Commerce in Cedar Rapids - changed the specifications. Instead of two 8-inch courses of concrete, the job was changed to require 7.5 inches in the center of the road and 6 inches at the sides in one-piece construction.

The low bidder, Ford Paving Co., changed its bid to $2.84 a square yard. The bid was accepted.

Work delays

Gravel from the Northern Gravel Co. was slow in coming. Work didn't start until late August and pouring of concrete didn't begin until Sept. 17. Supervisors approved the acquisition of gravel, wherever it could be found, no matter the cost, and the project seemed to be back on track to be done by Nov. 1.

Then the rains came - for 10 days. Trucks broke down. Work was at a standstill. The Seedling Mile road stood at three-fourths of a mile on Nov. 25, 1918, when the county engineer halted work as the winter freeze set in.

Work resumed in the spring, and Iowa's first Lincoln Highway Seedling Mile was completed in the summer of 1919. It was 16 feet wide and contained a 9,669 square yards of concrete, costing $30,462.70.

With excavating and grading costing $4,474.11, the mile's total cost was about $35,000.

The highway on either side of the mile was eventually paved and became Highway 30.

Today, the seedling mile is marked by a memorial placed at the west end of the mile on what is now Mount Vernon Road.

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