Year constructed: 1910
Alternate name: Des Moines River bridge, Wagon bridge, Bluff bridge
Bridge type: Pin-Connected Pennsylvania Through Truss
National Register of Historic Places status:
Listed
Length: 703 feet
Width: 16 feet
Spans: 12
FHWA: 77850
Jurisdiction: Boone County
Location: 1000 200th Street over the Des Moines River, 2.8 miles southwest of Boone, Section 36, T84N-R27W (Yell township).
Details
"The bridge question is settled," the Boone News-Republican announced in November 1909. "The board of directors of the Boone Commercial association and the [county] board of supervisors met at the office of the former Friday afternoon and talked the matter over with a view to putting an end to the vexed question." The county and a citizens' group from Incline had been arguing for the better part of the year over the site for a wagon bridge over the Des Moines River. The county wanted to build the new structure near the existing Boone Viaduct of the Chicago and North Western Railroad, directly west of Eighth Street in Boone. The citizen's group wanted the reconstruct the Incline Bridge. "The advocates of both sites have been warm in their conquest and the dispute had become quite acrid," the newspaper reported. "The board of course objected to building two bridges and at the same time realized that neither side would take care of the demand and desires of both factions." The Commercial Association offered to buy the Incline Bridge, and the problem was thus resolved.
Using steel rolled in Pittsburgh by Lackawanna and Jones and Laughlin and in Indiana by Inland, The Iowa Bridge Company of Des Moines completed the multiple-span through-truss replacement for the Incline Bridge in 1910. The structure, also called the Wagon Bridge, the Bluff Bridge and the Des Moines River Bridge, consists of a long-span Pennsylvania through-truss over the main channel of the river, with three pinned Pratt trusses over the flood plain on the east, all supported by steel cylinder piers. The county later contracted with the IBC to build the larger Des Moines River Bridge, which was eventually incorporated into the Lincoln Highway as a major crossing of the Des Moines River. It carried increasingly heavy traffic until its eventual replacement by a new truss in 1928; the 1928 bridge has also been replaced. In the late 19th and 20th centuries, before the Iowa State Highway Commission began using standard bridge plans, the individual counties were left to their own devices for highway and bridge construction. The counties contracted for large-scale bridges over the major rivers such as the Iowa, the Skunk and the Des Moines. Comprised of multiple pin-connected trusses, these structures have since been the focus of concerted replacement efforts, until all but a few have been replaced. The Boone Bridge is distinguished as one of the remaining large-scale wagon trusses in Iowa. A regionally important crossing of a major river, it is both historically and technologically significant - an important transportation-related resource.