This  blog series explores the historic Jefferson Highway Heritage Byway and its connection to Mason City, Iowa.

The Beginning and End of the Jefferson Highway

North-South Counterpart to the Lincoln

The vision for the Jefferson Highway, a great north-south highway spreading across the nation from pine to palm, came from a very unlikely source – E.T. Meredith of Des Moines, Iowa.

Meredith, a political activist, was the owner/publisher and editor of Successful Farming, a popular monthly magazine designed expressly for Midwest farmers.

Using his magazine to reach the masses, Meredith called for state and federal aid to improve the rural roads which kept farmers “imprisoned in mud.”

It wasn’t until the Lincoln Highway, an east-west national highway, was begun in 1913 that he started realizing that what his rural subscribers would benefit from most was a major highway to help interlink all those farm-to-market roads, which would then encourage more townships and counties to improve their roads.

Meredith envisioned a north-south counterpart to the Lincoln. The highway would run through the Mississippi Valley, aligning with the Louisiana Purchase and would be named the Jefferson Highway in recognition of President Jefferson’s farsightedness in acquiring the territory.

In a speech made at the Sixteenth Annual Convention of the United States Good Roads Association in 1928, Mason City attorney and northern director of the Interstate Trail, Hugh H. Shepard explained that the Chamber Association in New Orleans was, “induced to call a convention [November 15-16, 1915] in their winter capital of America… because it was thought that if the two ends of the highway could be lined up and tied together, the middle sections would take care of themselves.”

Nearly 300 delegates from 11 states, including delegates representing all 500 miles of the Interstate Trail (IT), were present for that first conference. Shepard iterated that members of the Interstate Trail Association came prepared to offer all 500 miles of their trail to serve as the backbone for the new Jefferson Highway.

Delegates Receive Their Work Orders

“Delegates were sent home to undertake the work of building the highway on the ground and of getting the highway properly marked and advertised,” Shepard said.

Meredith received the official certificate of registration for the Iowa division of the Jefferson Highway on September 26, 1916. It noted the Interstate Trail would now be known as the Jefferson Highway, extending from New Orleans, Louisiana, to Winnipeg, Canada. It also noted the highway would be known as the “From Pine to Palm” and “The Vacation Route of America.”

In the February 1916 edition of the Jefferson Highway Declaration newsletter [JHA historic newsletters available online at jeffersonhighway.org] Meredith wrote that there was so much enthusiasm and support, “…as to have accomplished quite remarkable results in the two and one-half months since the New Orleans convention.

Early road reports, of dirt roads being graveled and some counties already bonding for pavement, may have caused the JHA directors to be too optimistic. With expectations of wrapping up their road project early they had adopted a resolution specifying 1919 as the target date for the hard surfacing of the entire highway.

Iowa Road Improvement Progresses Slowly

In Iowa, however, hard surfacing wouldn’t happen for several more years.

“Before Iowa can progress properly with its road building and particularly with the hard surfacing of its public roads, a change in the state law is required which will give greater lea way to counties for the issuance of bonds,” Meredith wrote in the February 1915 edition of the Declaration.

With the aid and guidance of Iowa State Highway Commission chief engineer, Thomas MacDonald, and later Fred White, the Jefferson Highway was graded, graveled and finally paved over a number of years, and in different phases.

The Iowa state legislature finally extended the power of counties to issue bonds for road paving in 1919, but it wasn’t until 1927 when a big rush to issue bonds occurred. New legislation raised the amount of money a county could borrow and gave them the authorization to use their share of primary road funds to pay down both the principal and interest borrowed.

By the fall of 1930 the Jefferson was an (almost) completely paved highway crossing Iowa, extending from the Minnesota to the Missouri state borders.

Sadly, by the time of this momentous occasion, when the last section of pavement was poured, the name, “Jefferson Highway,” was already beginning to fade.

The entity bringing the highway paving to completion was a federal-state partnership that had begun to take shape around 1916 with federal aid and more power being turned over to the state highway department.

It was this same partnership, however, which brought trail associations to an end because they were not committed to any of the named highways, but to the building of interconnected highways covering the entire country.

Jefferson Highway Route Numbered and Later Renumbered

Iowa adopted the Primary Road numbering system on July 1, 1920 and all former trail names were assigned a highway number. The Jefferson Highway route became Iowa Primary Road No. 1 from the Minnesota state line north of Northwood to the Missouri state line south of Lamoni.

When the U.S. route numbering system was adopted on October 16, 1926, the Iowa 1 number was decommissioned and the route was incorporated into two new U.S. route segments — U.S. 65 and U.S. 69.

Jefferson Highway Association – Short Lived, But Effective

Even though the era of trail associations was short-lived, the Jefferson Highway Association, along with supporters of all the other important named highways through Iowa, could pride themselves for being major players in the movement that finally brought decent automobile highways to the United States.

In his 1928 “Good Roads” address, Hugh Shepard, past international president and lifetime member of the JHA, summed up the association’s effectiveness best by saying “The closer association of communities and individuals, both neighboring and distant, causes sectional lines to be obliterated and doubts and mistrust to be banished. In this work of promoting peace and good will, the building of good roads and the establishment of trunk lines and international highways has played an important part.”