Year constructed: 1915
Bridge type: Reinforced Concrete Slab
National Register of Historic Places status:
Listed
Length: 17 feet
Width: 18 feet
Spans: 1
Jurisdiction: Greene county
Location: 210th Street over Little Beaver Creek, 2.5 miles east and 1 mile north of Grand Junction, Section 36, T83N-R29W (Junction Township)
Details
In 1912 Carl G. Fisher, founder of the Prest-O-Lite headlight company, began boosting what he called the Coast-to-Coast Rock Highway, a continuous line that extended from New York to San Francisco. The road was soon renamed the Lincoln Highway, and in July 1913 the Lincoln Highway Association was formed to promote it. Although not the first to propose such a venture, Fisher had timed his promotion well. Some 2.5 million miles of roadway had been laid in the country, but less than 7% of these had been improved by grading or graveling. Only a few hundred miles had been paved with brick; concrete was as yet untried in rural areas. Moreover, since roads were by and large a county-level function, the roads that did exist lacked any coordination, resulting in an uneven patchwork of dissimilar routes, making travel difficult for all but a few areas and virtually impossible on a country-wide basis.
"The highways of America," Fisher stated, "are built chiefly of politics, whereas the proper material is crushed rock or concrete." With the numbers of automobiles growing geometrically and their drivers becoming increasingly more adventurous, the transcontinental route was an idea whose time had come. In its formative years, the Lincoln Highway was more imaginary than real. Using existing section-line roads and county-built river crossings, it zigzagged across central Iowa on its way between Clinton on the Mississippi River, and Council Bluffs on the Missouri.
The Little Beaver Creek bridge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing part of the Lincoln Highway.