Marshalltown

MARSHALLTOWN

Pop. 15,731

Control, Pilgrim Hotel.

Cedar Rapids
73.2

Carroll
106.4

Hotels, garages. Local speed limit, 15 miles per hour in business district, 20 miles in residence part, enforced. Lincoln Highway concrete paved through the city and for three miles east and west. Five banks, CGW, M&St.L, C&NW Railroads, express company, telephone company, 2 newspapers, trolley. Chamber of Commerce and Information Bureau in Pilgrim Hotel.

Free camping, with fine equipment, at City Park, one-half mile north of Pilgrim hotel, on Third Ave.

Indian Reservation, 16 miles east. Attention called to grade elimination west of city which involved the handling of many thousands of cubic yards of material by steam shovel. The Iowa Soldiers' Home is located here.

Concrete, Graded Dirt

L.H. Local Consul, H.A. Weisman, merchant, 18 E. Main St.

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

East Marshalltown.
"Shady Oaks, claimed by owners Robert and Mary Gift to be the first cabin camp on Iowa's Lincoln Highway. Shady Oaks was begun by Bill and Les Norton in 1924... A log cabin dayroom was built of oak that same year, for use by the visitors." (Greg Franzwa, The Lincoln Highway: Iowa, The Patrice Press, 1995). Over the years the land was the site of a school, a campground for Methodist camp meetings, and a stop for those waiting to have their grain milled at the Rock Valley Mill. The area was also the site of the only Indian raid in the county. It became the first cabin camp west of the Mississippi on the Lincoln Highway as the Shady Oaks Cabin Camp. It has been a campground since then, and today has 12 full RV hook-ups.

The campsite is host to a 12-story, 55-foot treehouse that remains a family project, under management by Mick Jurgensen, his wife, Liz, mother Judy and grandmother Mary Gift. Mick says the adjoining prairie looks much as it would have in 1848, and a 1901 railroad trestle is visible beyond the prairie.

These photos shows the only remaining residential cabin on the site, formerly used as a storage shed, and now a charming and homey cabin. The dayroom cabin remains in that capacity. Please check out the Shady Oaks website.

Marshalltown.
The Evans Hotel stood at the important intersection of Third Avenue and Main Street. In Lincoln Highway days, there were three major hotels - the Pilgrim, the Stoddard, and the Evans - along with the Marshalltown Evangelical Deaconess Hospital at this crossroads. The highway ran west from this corner to traverse Main Street, which in the fall of 2000 reverted to two-way streets for the first time since the mid-1960s. The Evans, long a residence for transients, was razed in the spring of 1998.

Marshalltown.
The Marshall County Courthouse on Main Street between Center Street and First Avenue, three blocks west from the Evans Hotel. For a few years the original Lincoln Highway turned south at Center (out of frame to the right) and went a block south to Church Street before continuing west. That route was later changed to continue on Main Street until turning south at Ninth. The Courthouse was built in the 1880s, and plans were being made for its demolition in the 1970s. It got so bad that the columns and conical peak over the dome were removed so it wouldn't fall to the ground - not to mention the devastation brought about from Dutch elm disease. A renovation later in that decade, however, brought the building back to its 19th-century glory.

Marshalltown.
Newton's Jewelers and its fabulous rotating diamond stood across from the Courthouse on Main Street. It was removed in 1998.

Marshalltown.
The furniture store is still going strong, even if the signage is not.

Marshalltown.
Lincolnway exits Marshalltown to the west today as it did when it was the Lincoln Highway. Chippewa Lanes - formerly Crew Lanes - is a long-time Lincolnway establishment. By the way, it is a bowling alley.

MARSHALL COUNTY

Marshalltown