Holliwell Covered Bridge
historical street bridge in the United States
Holliwell Bridge is a wooden covered bridge in Madison County, Iowa. It was built over the Middle River in 1880. The Holliwell Bridge is located two miles southeast of Winterset over the Middle River. Built by Harvey P. Jones and George K. Foster for a cost of $1,180, it is the longest of the six remaining covered bridges in Madison County, spanning 110 feet with a total length of 159 feet. It is also the longest remaining timber bridge in the state of Iowa.
The bridge is no longer in use, but was renovated and restored in 1995 at a cost of $225,000 ($475,000 today). It is featured in the film The Bridges of Madison County.
The Holliwell Bridge is in its original location but supporting abutments were often washed out by flooding, so the angle at which the bridge crossed Middle River has been changed. (Early county bridges were built on timber piles or stone masonry abutments, but in 1884, the county began purchasing large quantities of tubular piers from nationally-known bridge fabricating companies. According to county records, the Holliwell Bridge originally had timber pile piers.) The Holliwell now consists of a timber Town lattice truss with a superimposed arch, timber stringer approach spans, timber abutments and wingwalls with concrete-filled iron cylinder piers.
The public source identifies “Holliwell Covered Bridge” as historical street bridge in the United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Holliwell, Covered and Bridge.
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The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1624852. Authority coordinates are 41.322, -93.959. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1880, 1995 and 1884.
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This entry incorporates text from “Holliwell Covered Bridge” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.