The Lincoln Highway Bridge in Tama, IA, once again needs your help to survive. Due to severe deterioration, engineers say it should be replaced if it’s going to continue serving as a truck route. The Tama City Council is holding a public hearing Monday, August 21, at 5:30 pm, at the Tama City Auditorium to hear comments on whether to repair or replace the bridge.
If you can attend the meeting and speak, please do so. If you can’t attend, you can send comments to tamacityclerk@tamacityia.gov , and / or make a comment below and we’ll pass it along to make sure you are heard.
If you commented before, feel free to recycle your earlier comments. Possible topics include but are not limited to: What does the Tama Bridge mean to you? What special memories of the bridge, do you have? What would be lost if the bridge were replaced?
Two ways to save the bridge the Council might consider are 1) Make the LH Bridge a pedestrian-only bridge and create a new truck route, and 2) Redesign the replacement bridge with modern safety railings and include the historic railings and lamp posts as design elements. Option 1 is the most likely to keep the bridge on the National Register of Historic Places and maintain its historicity.
Prairie Rivers of Iowa would like to collect as many comments as possible to make sure the messages are delivered.
This Place (bridge) matters. Do what is best to save it as a national landmark.
Please make it into a pedestrian walk bridge. It needs to be saved.
Are there any fundraisers for it yet?
It’s called “historical preservation”. There are all kinds of grants and funds available to communities to repair and restore historically significant infrastructure. The most likely and feasible option would be to allow the bridge to remain as a pedestrian bridge, and develop the adjacent park into a nice little rest area with historical markers and information about the bridge, similar to what was done on the Eastern edge of the community of Grand Junction. If traffic and large trucks/farm equipment are no longer able to travel that way, there are plenty of alternative routes nearby.
I wholeheartedly support saving this wonderful work of Americana!