Madison County Covered Bridges

The roofs were never for romance. A covered bridge is really an ordinary timber bridge with a roof and walls built around it to keep the weather off the structural wood underneath. Left bare, the big load-bearing timbers would rot within a decade or two; sheltered under a roof, the same timbers could last a hundred years and more. It was simple frontier economy, protecting an expensive bridge the way you would shingle a barn.

Madison County's bridges share a distinctive look thanks to builder Harvey P. Jones and his crews, who raised several of them in the 1880s with a nearly flat roof rather than the steep peak seen elsewhere. They were built where the county's roads had to cross the Middle River, Cedar Creek, and the other streams that thread the countryside, and for generations they carried wagons, then cars, over the water.

Roseman Bridge, built in 1883 over the Middle River, is the one most people picture. It is the bridge at the heart of the famous story, a long barn-red span reached down a gravel lane southwest of Winterset, and the most visited of the six. Holliwell Bridge, also built in the 1880s, is the longest of the group, a graceful span over the Middle River on the southeast side of town.

The others each have their own character. Imes Bridge, dating to 1870, is the oldest survivor and now sits in the little town of St. Charles. Cutler-Donahoe and Hogback bridges round out the set, and Cedar Bridge has the hardest luck of all: the original was lost, a replica was destroyed by arson, and it has been rebuilt again so visitors can still cross it. The county and its volunteers have fought hard to keep all six standing.

Cutler-Donahoe Bridge has been moved into the Winterset City Park, which makes it the easiest one to reach on foot, a good first stop before heading out to the rural spans. Most of the others still stand near their original river crossings, so seeing them means a drive through the countryside, which is half the pleasure.

In 1992 an Iowa writer set a quiet, bittersweet love story among these bridges, and the book became one of the best-selling novels of its era. When it was made into a film in the mid-1990s, crews shot on location here, and Roseman and Cedar bridges appeared on screen for audiences all over the world. Almost overnight, six farm bridges in Iowa became a destination.

The fame brought crowds, and unfortunately a string of arson fires over the years, which is why the bridges are watched over more carefully now. But it also gave the county a reason to preserve what it might otherwise have let quietly fall down. A festival held every fall, decades old now, celebrates the bridges and fills Winterset with visitors, and the story still draws a steady stream of travelers who want to stand where it was set.

The bridges lie in and around Winterset, roughly a half hour southwest of Des Moines and reached easily off Interstate 80. They are free and open every day, and the best way to see them is a self-guided driving loop that ties several together, available from the county tourism office in town. Give yourself a half day if you want to visit several and linger.

Fill up on gas, water, and snacks in Winterset before you head out, because the bridges themselves have no services. Some sit at the end of gravel roads that turn muddy after rain, so pick a dry day if you can. Walk out onto a deck, look up at the old timber trusses, listen to the river below, and it is easy to see why these plain, practical bridges have held so many people's imagination for so long.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.