Year constructed: 1885
Bridge type: Pin-Connected Pratt Through Truss
National Register of Historic Places status: Listed
Length: 156 feet
Width: 15.8 feet
Spans: 1
FHWA: 324480
Jurisdiction: Union County
Location: 260th Street over the Grand River, 9.1 miles east of Arispe, Section 26, T71N-R28W (Pleasant Township)
Details
Located over Grand River some nine miles east of Arispe, this bridge consists of a single pin-connected Pratt through truss, approached on both sides by timber stringer spans. Early Union County records have been destroyed in a courthouse fire and so no information concerning this bridge's political history is extant. A builder's plate on the truss itself indicates that ti was built in 1885 by the King Iron Bridge and Manufacturing Company of Cleveland. The Grand River Bridge has carried county-road traffic to the present, with the replacement of its timber components as its only alteration of note.
With virtually all of the in-state and national bridge companies promoting it, the pin-connected Pratt through truss was the steel bridge of choice for medium-scale crossings in Iowa in the late 19th century. Thousands of such spans were erected on th state's road system during this period of intense bridge construction activity, and today they remain the most populous structural type remaining from the 19th century. With its original superstructure and substructure intact, the Grand River Bridge is distinguished as a well-preserved example of this statewide bridge building trend [adapted from Fraser 1992].