Excerpt from the Iowa State Highway Commission’s blueprints for “650′ continuous steel frame overhead crossing,” over what’s now South 7th Street, dated 1934. The Kenyon Road bridge(s) opened in 1936-37. Before that, US 20 crossed the Des Moines River on a viaduct heading northeast from the intersection of G Street and Avenue C.
Two historic bridges in Fort Dodge are going to be replaced in a yearlong project. Next year, the other bridges will get overlays, and the invisible remaining parts of IA 926 will be gone.
Work to demolish and replace the westbound bridges of Kenyon Road across the Des Moines River and South 7th Street starts today (Sept. 20), the Fort Dodge Messenger reports. As you can see in the Messenger’s pictures and on Google Street View, while it might look like two bridges from the top, and even feel like one bridge because the in-between portion is on raised ground, it’s very visibly four bridges underneath.
One of the bridges being replaced was named the Herring Viaduct after the governor of Iowa who was in office at the time.