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Iowa State University Alumni Association| online edition | winter 2004

 


WINTER 2004
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Cover Story:
>>Bridges: Designing, Building, Preserving

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PRESERVING THE ROMANCE:
MADISON COUNTY'S COVERED BRIDGES

There’s something undeniably romantic about covered bridges. If there were any doubt, Robert James Waller’s best-selling novel The Bridges of Madison County put an end to it. The simple wooden bridges take you back to a time long ago: a time before cars and superhighways and bridges made of pre-cast concrete.

Madison County, Iowa, once had 19 covered bridges, designed and built in the late 1880s by wood craftsmen who were experienced in building barns with heavy timbers. Not much is known about these craftsmen, but it’s likely that they built these bridges without the formal guidance of a blueprint. Perhaps they heard about a covered bridge in a neighboring state and went to look at it; perhaps they talked to the builder of that bridge and took some notes to bring back to their community; perhaps a group of men got together and built the new bridge the same way they’d raise a barn.

These craftsmen weren’t building bridges for romance, or history, or beauty. These bridges were functional. Farmers needed to cross Iowa’s many streams, and wood was the most abundant, cost-efficient material.

But wood also deteriorates. Over the years, the bridges started wearing out. Many were destroyed and replaced with more durable bridges made from steel or concrete. The ones that survived were dilapidated and rotting, some leaning dangerously to one side.

In the late 1980s, an historical preservation group and the Madison County engineer made a commitment to restore the six remaining covered bridges. Four of those bridges – Roseman, Holliwell, Cedar, and Hogback – were restored by Shuck-Britson Consulting Engineers of Des Moines. Robert Britson, the company’s president, graduated from Iowa State in 1973 with a master’s degree in structural engineering. His firm is experienced in bridge design, repair, and historic restoration. His goal was to restore the bridges to their original condition.

“The first thing we did was collect information from the archives – newspaper articles with photographs, county historical society documents,” said Britson. “We wanted to see what the bridges looked like originally, because some of them had customizing done to them later. Some of the siding had on four or five suits of clothes.”

After assessing the condition of the bridges, Britson and his staff made a list of the bridges’ defects and damage and devised a remedy to get them back into healthy condition. Working with timber is becoming a lost art, he said, and it was important to determine what species of wood was used in the original construction in order to keep the bridges historically accurate.

The restoration process was completed in the 1990s, replacing roofs and siding, repairing deck planks and trusses, adding braces, and inserting steel into the bridges’ wooden framework. The results were so remarkable that when a motion picture company came to Madison County to shoot the film based on Waller’s book, the Roseman Bridge had to be scruffed up to meet the director’s expectations of what a historic wooden bridge should look like.

Cost to repair the bridges (all six were eventually restored) ranged from $31,000 to $225,000 per bridge. They’ve been a “huge economic draw” for the county according to Brenda Hollingsworth (’71 interior design), program director for the Madison County Chamber & Development Group. In 2001, the county saw $6.5 million in tourism and tourism-related revenue.

But Hollingsworth said people in the community don’t think about the bridges in economic terms. “The people in this area have a real appreciation for preserving history,” she said. “The bridges are representative of the spirit and mindset of the people of Madison County. They’ve been a centerpiece for family gatherings, marriages, and picnics. We can’t imagine living without them.”

Read on | The Legacy of Conde B. McCullough