CEDAR COUNTY

Stanwood

STANWOOD	Pop. 500	Control, Main Road Leading to Village.
Clinton 51.7	Cedar Rapids 28.3	L.H. runs along the corporate limits, three blocks from main business part. continue straight ahead unless supplies are needed. One hotel, 3 garages. Local speed limit, 10 miles per hour, not enforced. One bank, C&NW Railroad, 14 general business places.
Graded Dirt		L.H. Local Consul, Homer Hart

- A Complete Official Road Guide of The LINCOLN HIGHWAY Fifth Edition (1924)

Stanwood.
The Lincoln Highway did not go through Stanwood, just as U.S. Highway 30 today does not. Instead the road skirted the southern edge of the community. If the Highway would not come to him, at least one Stanwood entrepreneur would go to the Highway, and today we can enjoy Stockman's single-column gas station. Old double-column, canopied gas stations are hard to find, although highway enthusiasts can usually sniff them out (former national LHA president Bob Ausberger has canopied station radar in his head). A single pedestal is so odd - and rare - that you almost think it started out with two, if it weren't for the brick pedestal and latticework.

Stanwood.
Now this was a classy sign! The Highway Gardens proprietor stated that the neon has not worked for many years. Perhaps some day the Lincoln Highway will again bathe in its martini-and-olive neon glow. For now, though, it has been removed and stored.

"The roads may have been awful but the same soils which produced the sticky gumbo raised great crops. They still do."

- Greg Franzwa, The Lincoln Highway: Iowa, The Patrice Press, 1995.

So true - how many times is it said that the soil in Cedar County is some of the richest in the world.