Readers help uncover the mysteries of old CRANDIC rail line from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City

I was surprised and flattered at the responses received after my previous column.

People sent in maps, stories and snippets relating to their experiences with the CRANDIC and other interurbans. After taking this valuable feedback into account, along with a mixture of historic photos, sheet maps, county atlases and fire insurance maps, my updated station location list is as follows:

• Cedar Rapids: Confirmed at the “Town Center” parking ramp on Second Street and Fourth Avenue SE
• Crandic: Confirmed railyards for the company by 16th Avenue and Rockford Road SW
• Pinney: Likely in the vicinity of the Hawkeye Downs Speedway and Expo Center
• Waconia: Likely by the ADM plant near Waconia Avenue and Waconia Lane SW
• Konigsmark: Likely by the eastern edge of the Eastern Iowa Airport alongside 18th Street SW, near American Fence Co., 360 Networks and Frito-Lay
• Swisher: Likely either directly north or south of the intersection of Second Street SW and railroad tracks
• Cou Falls: Likely in the vicinity of the intersection of 140th Street and Cou Falls Road NW, near the Hawkeye Wildlife Management Area
• North Liberty: Likely by West Cherry Street near AE Outdoor Power and Moxie Solar
• Oakdale: Confirmed near Oakdale Studio A and Old Hospital Road, closer to the former location of sanatorium buildings  
• Coralville: Likely by First Avenue and Fifth Street, near the Iowa River Power restaurant, or the southeast corner of First Avenue and Sixth Street
• Iowa City (University): Confirmed at the western edge of Hubbard Park
• Iowa City (Yards): Likely either directly south of the University of Iowa power plant or on the northwest corner of West Benton and South Capitol Street
• Iowa City (Passenger): Confirmed on the northwest corner of South Clinton and East College Street (currently the site of the Old Capitol Town Center) or on the southeast corner of Burlington and Front Street next to the UI power plant

My map has been adjusted as well, with a new layer added for corrections.

The CRANDIC rail line map

A discovery from several reader responses is that the CRANDIC line did not just have the stops officially listed in the timetables, but also upwards of 60 informal stops, mostly in rural areas, that could presumably be made at the request of passengers. In fact, a historical narrative of the line from retired University of Iowa professor Thomas Schulein notes that “the trains would stop just about anywhere!” 

Unsurprisingly, this quirk of the historic interurban has not been suggested for revival by any feasibility study; I would not be particularly keen to endorse it either. Some of these stops do end up making an appearance on later timetables.

One of these informal stops of particular note was in front of a white farmhouse built in 1910 on what is now 12th Avenue in Coralville. Photos and stories point to a staircase that used to go down to the CRANDIC tracks, which are in front of the house. The building is now home to the Genesis Church, and its pastor, Dave Conrads, recalled a local story of how “a Dr. Burge rented the house (circa 1920s) and the train would stop and pick him up and take him either to town or to Oakdale where he treated (tuberculosis) patients.” 

Incredibly, a map of the CRANDIC line from 1951 with about 60 locations provided by a source at Travero, the current parent company of CRANDIC, has a notation for a point named “Burge” between the Oakdale sanatorium and the main town of Coralville — an area where this house is situated. Whether this Burge had any relation to Adelaide Burge, the final dean of women who is the namesake for the east campus dormitory Burge Hall, is to be determined.

The path the interurban took in Iowa City now seems to have been uncovered as well. A map of Iowa City from 1947 shows the rail line crossing over Iowa Avenue on its low-slung bridge, then traveling south through CRANDIC’s yards behind the UI power plant until it reached Court Street, after which it turned east on Court and north on Capitol, looping around what is now the northern half of the Old Capitol Town Center, passing by the depot on the northwest corner of South Clinton and East College Street, the southeast edge of the Pentacrest, and the Engineering building, before heading back south along its earlier path.

Campus maps from the 1940s also show a “University” station where the tracks pass by the western corner of Hubbard Park.

While all traces of the primary Iowa City depot on Clinton and College have been erased by the construction of the mall, several commenters noted that a depot for the CRANDIC line was extant in Iowa City for several decades past the 1950s. Indeed, an article in the Press-Citizen from May 17, 1980, written by Irving Weber notes that “in the last years of the passenger line, the station was located on the southeast corner of Burlington and Front streets.” 

A Sanborn fire insurance map from 1933, plus a UI campus map from 1941-2 show a depot at this location, while the Sanborn map shows a “freight depot” on the southwest corner of the street closer to the university power plant. It is this depot that appears to have survived until at least the mid-1990s, and whose archival photograph from 1955 was erroneously speculated by me to have been located farther south; its usage for freight also explains why the building survived long after passenger services on the CRANDIC line ceased. 

Reader accounts

An interesting story was sent to me by Brandt Echternacht, who at one point was a facility planner for the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. He wrote of plans the UI had for two stops on a theoretical revived CRANDIC line — one near the College of Public Health building, and another passenger station at the university’s Oakdale campus.

While the Oakdale stop remained only “conceptual,” an actual platform was built for the other stop around 20 years ago. Indeed, if one is to look at the pedestrian bridge across Highway 6 connecting the College of Public Health building to Westlawn and the parking ramp on Newton Road, there is a small section at the base of its north end, where the stairs and ramp converge, that is level and parallel to the railroad tracks next to it. As a student who used that walkway frequently, I always wondered why the ramp and a set of stairs ended so far away from the Public Health building — the chimera of effective public transit in eastern Iowa might be the reason I was looking for after all these years.

Another point made on Twitter, by Ben Kaplan (who also runs the blog Corridor Urbanism), was that the CRANDIC line did not exist in a vacuum, but instead was a single component in a rich network of streetcars and other interurbans that in the case of the former has been completely replaced with buses, and with the latter gone completely. This is most evident in Cedar Rapids, with connections there to both the city’s streetcar network as well as interurbans to Waterloo (now the bulk of the Cedar Valley Nature Trail) and Mt. Vernon/Lisbon. But the proximity of the CRANDIC line in Iowa City to the town’s streetcar network is also evident from town and campus maps from the 1920s.

I realize that this piece is more history lecture than zesty hot takes, but I will next wrap up discussion of the interurban (for now) with a look at projected costs for reviving the CRANDIC line compared to other major transportation projects in the corridor — namely, the I-80/380 interchange expansion and the widening of I-380.

Austin Wu grew up in Cedar Rapids and is a recent graduate from the University of Iowa College of Public Health. In his spare time he has taken interest in local history and urban design, and through this column seeks to imagine a better tangible future in eastern Iowa by taking inspiration from principles of the past. It will appear in the Press-Citizen twice-monthly. Follow him on Twitter, @theaustinwu.