Piece of History: Look-See-Hear-Ask tour of Cedar Rapids

On May 18, 1955, the Cedar Rapids Chamber of Commerce chartered 10 buses and took 360 people on a Look-See-Hear-Ask tour of the city.

On board were 225 high school students, their principals and select citizens. The tour lasted from 8:30 a.m. until 3 p.m. Its goal was to give riders a better idea of what improvements were being made in the city and what others might be needed.

The tour was so well received that the passengers said they wished they could share what they’d learned with the whole community.

Soon after, The Cedar Rapids Gazette published a city tour patterned after the chamber route and designed for a family's Sunday drive.

The tour started at the Iowa Masonic Library and covered the Darling & Co. fertilizer plant, the school additions at Arthur, Tyler, Hayes and Garfield, the new Erskine school, a 500-house Skogman housing development, the sanitation department's new garbage truck garage and expanded sewage disposal plant, the new Square D Co. plant, and the new Martin-Roasa Tractor & Equipment Co. building.

Tara Templeman is curator at The History Center. Comments: curator@historycenter.org