Page 7 - RAGBRAI2009

DAY 3 - GREENFIELD TO INDIANOLA

Day 3 of this year’s route

will find us riding by one of

the famous covered bridges

in Madison County. The Imes

Covered Bridge, built in 1870,

is the oldest bridge of the

six still standing in Madi-

son County, all of which are

on the National Register of

Imes Bridge, Madison County Historic Places. The bridges
were covered to protect the

wooden structural members

underneath from the ele-

ments and extend their life. The Madison

County bridges were brought to national prominence when Iowa-born author,

Robert James Waller, used them as a backdrop for his 1992

bestseller, “The Bridges of Madison County”. Of

the 23,000

overyARgeec(ecndata. t1De1si,C0stac0oor0tlvihyseeelreaeyrCnTsdlhRaoegoveofcis)ethcnaaentcdlDhaesrietspcIcoreevseernytRsreesccwiteoeinrtsdht2iein0nd0Ia19orwmcrhoaiau,lee6toe5ol.f9ogtahirceeal
Recent Disc Discovery
the oldest (earliest) excavated intact archaeologi-

cal site in the state. It includes 38 unfinished tools that

were recovered by Iowa State University archaeologists,

near Carlisle in Warren County. The character, composition,

and location of the cache suggest it was established to supply a

stone-poor landscape with tool preforms that Clovis hunters could

convert quickly into spear points and butchery tools.

Stop by our booth in Milo (Day 4) to view these rare artifacts in

person and to ask State Archaeologist John Doershuk, Mark Anderson

of the OSA, and Matt Hill of ISU, questions about Iowa archaeology.

Figure 1. Cache uncovered. Figure 2. Two unfinished
butchery tools and an

unfinished spear point from
the Carlisle cache.

Photos and passage
contributed by Matthew

G. Hill, Iowa State
University.