After collapse, historic ‘Blue Bridge’ saved after all

Cedar Rapids — About 147 years after it was built, Linn County’s oldest bridge has been moved successfully from Bertram Road’s Indian Creek to the trails of Indian Creek Nature Center.

Background

Since the 1970s, officials have discussed the possibility of replacing the 1876 Bertram Bridge. Fire trucks, semi-trailers and snow plows couldn’t cross it. The timber deck had been replaced several times over.

Repurposing the bridge for pedestrian trails at Indian Creek Nature Center, which volunteered to accept the bridge, helped counter resistance to altering a historic structure.

But when crews tried to lift structure off its foundation in April, the structure twisted — and the outcome wasn’t looking good.

Officials from the Linn County Secondary Road Department did not anticipate the steel truss structure, endeared to many as “Blue Bridge” thanks to a paint job in 1991, to be salvageable. Moving a bridge this old would be tricky, and their worst fears had been all but confirmed for a project that was the first of its kind for both Linn County and Indian Creek Nature Center.

At first, officials thought too many members of the bridge had been damaged.

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What’s happened since

Upon further inspection, the damage wasn’t as bad as first assessed. The bridge’s southernmost 30 feet was no longer usable, but the rest of the 115-foot bridge was.

“Once we looked at that, we realized we can’t salvage the entire bridge, but we can save a good portion of it,” said Linn County Assistant Engineer Garrett Reddish.

In September, the process initiated in 2020 started to come to a close as the structure was delivered to Indian Creek Nature Center to connect the Stimple Prairie and Cedar Rapids Prairie trails just east of Indian Creek Nature Center’s central campus.

The $184,000 move — part of a $2.5 million project to remove the existing bridge on Bertram Road and install a new concrete beam bridge up to modern standards — didn’t cost taxpayers any more after the botched first attempt. Extra expenses, if any, were paid by the contractor.

The new bridge is now open to vehicle traffic crossing the Indian Creek waterway on Bertram Road SE.

The old bridge at its new home in Indian Creek Nature Center will need a little more work before it opens to pedestrians in the coming months. Soil will need to be graded, wood planks need to be reinstalled after the move and parts damaged during the move will be repainted.

The steel truss, which previously supported vehicle traffic across the Blue Bridge, will no longer be a structural component after the collapse — it remains just for looks. Now, its functional role has been replaced by structural beams under the truss.

Linn County’s oldest bridge was first built for pedestrians and horse-drawn wagons making their way to market before the invention and rise of automobiles.

“That bridge has been part of this community and helped shape this community into what it is. What people would’ve seen when they crossed that bridge was woods and prairie,” said Jean Wiedenheft, director of land stewardship for Indian Creek Nature Center. “I’m passionate about it because it continues to serve the community much in the same way it did when it was first built.”

Now with a new life just for pedestrians, it’s come full circle.

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