July 6, 2013: This malfunctioned photo is of the 155th Street bridge over Yankee Run near Lowden. It was a 15-ton limit then, lowered to 10 tons in 2014. Both the National Bridge Inventory and Bridgehunter say it was built in 1976, but I find this hard to believe.
On July 18, 2017, the Cedar County Board of Supervisors closed a small pony truss bridge on 155th Street just outside Lowden. They might not have known it, but the closure severed an original segment of the Lincoln Highway.
The pre-paving route of the Lincoln Highway between Clarence and Wheatland followed a “stairstep” route with at least a dozen turns. Part of that included what is now 155th Street between County Road Y24 and Union Avenue. In 1927, US 30 was paved across Cedar County, incorporating some diagonals and moving an at-grade crossing with the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad from 155th to a new overhead crossing at 150th.
When the Lincoln Highway was signed across Iowa this century, the west part of 155th wasn’t included, perhaps because of this bridge but more likely because the half-mile of Union Avenue is a dirt road. Gregory Franzwa’s 1995 book and the Iowa Lincoln Highway Map Pack both omitted this segment, but I have found confirmations of its inclusion until at least summer 1925.
(I spotted the closure and the removed bridge on on a recent drive. Conditions were basically identical to seven weeks ago when I went to see the Midland school building — cold, overcast, and spitting rain — and I was up earlier than usual, so more study wasn’t a priority.)