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East Branch Indian Creek Bridge

Story County, Iowa
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Photo taken by Carl Wycoff

License: Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)

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Map 

Description 

N.M. Stark of Des Moines began building bridges for Story County in 1902 and soon became the county's only bridge builder. This trend lasted until the state legislature passed legislation in 1913 prohibiting annual bridge contracts and codifying bidding procedure. This effectively ended Stark's monopoly on bridge construction in the county; after 1913 he did not build a single bridge. But in the early 1910s he was responsible for several small- and medium-scale concrete arches, built using the patented configuration of Indianapolis engineer Daniel Luten. Stark's arches ranged in span length from 20 feet to 75 feet, and all featured the distinctive elliptical profile of Luten's design and the concrete parapets with incised rectangular panels that had become a Stark trademark. Located southeast of Nevada in Nevada Township, the East Indian Creek Bridge was one of the arches built by Stark during this period. It was constructed for a cost of $4,462, as part of a multiple-bridge contract awarded to Stark in May 1912. With a span length of 75 feet, the Indian Creek Bridge was the longest concrete arch built by Stark in the county, excluding the Squaw Creek Bridge (since destroyed by floods) he erected in Ames in 1908. It is thus technologically significant as a long-span example of a patented structural type, constructed by the state's most prolific concrete bridge builder before the standardization of bridge design in Iowa [adapted from Fraser 1992].

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Facts 

Overview
Arch bridge over East Branch Indian Creek on 260th Street
Location
Story County, Iowa
Status
Open to traffic
History
Built 1912
Builder
- N.M. Stark & Co. of Des Moines, Iowa
Design
Luten Arch
Dimensions
Length of largest span: 75.1 ft.
Total length: 78.1 ft.
Deck width: 16.4 ft.
Recognition
Posted to the National Register of Historic Places on May 15, 1998
Approximate latitude, longitude
+41.97522, -93.38753   (decimal degrees)
41°58'31" N, 93°23'15" W   (degrees°minutes'seconds")
Approximate UTM coordinates
15/467893/4647097 (zone/easting/northing)
Land survey
T. 83 N., R. 22 W., Sec. 27
USGS topographic map
Maxwell
Inventory numbers
IA 314630 (Iowa bridge number)
NRHP 98000485 (National Register of Historic Places reference number)
BH 14426 (Bridgehunter.com ID)
Inspection (as of 01/2011)
Appraisal: Functionally obsolete
Sufficiency rating: 88.7 (out of 100)
Average daily traffic (as of 2011)
120

Categories 

Arch (9,419)
Built 1912 (524)
Built during 1910s (6,729)
Closed-spandrel arch (2,759)
Deck arch (8,700)
Functionally obsolete (7,040)
Iowa (3,506)
Luten arch (55)
 N.M. Stark & Co. (18)
NR-listed (2,354)
One-lane traffic (7,112)
Open (28,314)
Owned by county (16,489)
Span length 75-100 feet (4,718)
Story County, Iowa (94)
Total length 75-100 feet (4,795)

Update Log 

  • September 8, 2012: Photo imported by Luke Harden
  • January 23, 2012: Photo imported by Luke Harden
  • December 19, 2011: Updated by Frank Hicks: Added NRHP info
  • July 27, 2011: Updated by Luke Harden: Added description and photograph

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