^Looking west from Iowa 38 near Wilton, October 2021.

In Iowa, US Route 6 follows closely alongside Interstate 80, as an east-west route spanning the middle of the state. It enters Iowa from the west by crossing a bridge over the Missouri River out of Omaha; it's the same bridge used by Interstate 480.  US Route 6's path through Council Bluffs was recently deleted, in a measure that rerouted US Route 6 onto Interstate 29 south and Interstate 80 east.  This creates a freeway bypass around the south side of town, that ends at Interstate 80's exit 8. While Interstate 80 veers northeast, US Route 6 stays easterly through Oakland and Atlantic.  At Atlantic, US Route 6 joins US Route 71 north as a means of duplexing with Interstate 80 again. At DeSoto, just west of Des Moines, US Route 6 jumps from Interstate 80 onto US Route 169 north, so it can get its own surface road alignment again starting at the town of Adel.  US Route 6 heads right through Des Moines; it stays north of downtown, but not as far north as Interstate 80 does. At Altoona, just barely east of Des Moines, US Route 6 joins Interstate 80 once again, at an interchange also home to US Route 65 and Iowa Route 330's southern end. At Newton, Iowa Route 14 brings US Route 6 north to its own eastward alignment yet again.  This time, US Route 6's independence lasts for a pretty long time, continuing through Iowa City to Wilton.  But US Route 6 gets taken back to Interstate 80 for yet another concurrency, by Iowa Route 38.  This final concurrency with Interstate 80 (in the state of Iowa, anyway) ends with US Route 6 diverting slightly south along Interstate 280 to Interstate 280's first interchange.  This puts US Route 6 in Davenport, along Kimberly Road.  The final stretch of US Route 6 in Iowa is a concurrency heading southward along Interstate 74; both routes cross the Mississippi River together from Bettendorf, Iowa, to Moline, Illinois.

My photo of US Route 6 in Iowa is the westbound reassurance marker for cars leaving the junction with US Route 63.  Specifically, this is the westerly of the two junctions involving US Routes 6 and 63, as US Route 63 turns from northerly to easterly along US Route 6 at this point.  This photo was taken on July 1, 2017, as I was driving from south to north along the US Route 63 corridor.
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