POTTAWATTAMIE COUNTY

Honey Creek

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

Honey Creek Grade.
Honey Creek is now little more than a wide spot in the road.  And actually, the main highway now bypasses what's left of the town altogether.  Honey Creek, however, was famous for the severe grade of the Lincoln Highway as it wound in and around the Loess Hills in Pottawattamie County.  

Honey Creek Grade.
The road followed the Honey Creek grade, a short stretch that was never paved but was preferable over the old Transcontinental Route that gave drivers fits as they tried to ascend its steep hills.   Though open to local traffic as late as the 1960s, today the grade is mostly overgrown with trees and foliage.  You can still walk its narrow path, however, and observe the severe perpendicular cut made into the hillside which marks the Lincoln Highway.  As with any Highway segment on private property, get permission first!

The course of the Lincoln Highway through Honey Creek followed the old transcontinental telegraph poles, some of which still stand.  This one even has most of its insulators, nearly overtaken by decades of foliage.  Over the years some of the poles have fallen, their green glass insulators scattering on the ground.

Other telegraph poles were used by farmers for fence posts.

The spectacular view of the Missouri River Valley and the Loess Hills from high atop the Honey Creek hill!

"This is the location of the toughest hill on the Lincoln Highway in Iowa - the Honey Creek grade.  Highway engineers entirely relocated the Lincoln Highway at an enormous cost to avoid the old Honey Creek hill.  The old incline was 1.25 miles long and at one time had lots of kinks and turns.  As the overheated cars approached the summit, drivers were confronted with a fifteen percent grade.  So the road was moved to the present alignment - a relocation of 2.65 miles.  The summit was lowered by eighty feet, the kinks and turns were removed, and the maximum grade reduced to six percent."

- Gregory Franzwa, The Lincoln Highway: Iowa, The Patrice Press, 1995

All images Copyright © Paul W. Walker, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001.