{"id":251,"slug":"marsh-rainbow-arch-bridge-lake-city-iowa","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["The Marsh Rainbow Arch is the bridge that was a patent — James Barney Marsh's design for the North Raccoon crossing, three eighty-foot spans of steel armature encased in concrete, built in 1914 for $10,970 when the county put it up against a truss design and the rainbow arch came in under estimate. The arches hold the roadbed up from below — the configuration Marsh patented and sold across the Midwest.","The bridge outlasted its road — bypassed in 1985, left standing in the county park it anchors now, the largest of the four Marsh arches built that year and the best-surviving of the type. The Howe truss it replaced went upstream and lasted to 1983; the rainbow arch that won the bidding is the one still spanning the Raccoon, a hundred ten years of concrete over the water.","The file keeps the Marsh bridge: the patented arch, the 1914 build, the 1985 bypass, and the concrete rainbow still over the river.","The Marsh Rainbow Arch is the archive's Iowa file — the patent bridge that outlasted the road it carried."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["The Marsh Rainbow Arch is the archive's Iowa file — the 1914 patent bridge and the county park survival.","A bridge that lost its road keeps its spans — the file's suggestion being that the Marsh arch's hold is the design: the concrete rainbow that was cheaper than the truss and prettier than the replacement, still carrying nothing over the Raccoon."]}],"name":"Marsh Rainbow Arch Bridge","aliases":["Rainbow Bridge"],"type":"BRIDGE","type_label":"Bridge","cats":["HAUNTING"],"groups":["hauntings","roads"],"desc":"Bridge associated with documented cultural history.","full_desc":"A bridge in Lake City, Iowa, Marsh Rainbow Arch Bridge is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Bridge associated with documented cultural history. HauntHunt files it with haunting reports. The dossier holds 1 reported claim and 1 legend, every one filed as account rather than fact. Visitor status is unverified; confirm before making the trip.","address":null,"city":"Lake City","county":null,"state":"Iowa","postal":null,"region":"Midwest","lat":42.26767,"lon":-94.731054,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"UNKNOWN","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Discovery pass. Earliest attestation, primary history, precise location and current access require independent enrichment.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"LOW","score":43.1,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0,"source_quality":0.6,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":193,"type":"OBJECTS_MOVING","description":"A local chocolate-disappearance story is associated with this bridge. Marsh Rainbow Arch Bridge's legend rides the corridor itself: a stretch of Iowa ground where drivers have told the same story for years. It circulates as local folklore — the kind communities keep rather than verify. Nothing here would make headlines alone; together the reports make a pattern.","evidence":"LOCAL_FOLKLORE","evidence_label":"Local folklore","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.7,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Local Legends Around Iowa's Haunted Locations","url":"https://www.iowapbs.org/article/8600/local-legends-around-iowas-haunted-locations","publisher":"Iowa PBS","type":"LOCAL_JOURNALISM","authority":3},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"A local chocolate-disappearance story is associated with this bridge. Roadside lore attaches to crossings, and Marsh Rainbow Arch Bridge in Lake City, Iowa is exactly the kind of crossing that collects it. The claim is neighborhood knowledge — retold locally, verified nowhere. The tale is the site's other archive — oral, embroidered, and outlasting the documents.","earliest":null,"evidence":"LOCAL_FOLKLORE","source":{"name":"Local Legends Around Iowa's Haunted Locations","url":"https://www.iowapbs.org/article/8600/local-legends-around-iowas-haunted-locations","publisher":"Iowa PBS","type":"LOCAL_JOURNALISM","authority":3}}],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Local Legends Around Iowa's Haunted Locations","url":"https://www.iowapbs.org/article/8600/local-legends-around-iowas-haunted-locations","publisher":"Iowa PBS","type":"LOCAL_JOURNALISM","authority":3}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Marsh Rainbow Arch Bridge (Lake City, Iowa)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_Rainbow_Arch_Bridge_(Lake_City%2C_Iowa)","desc":"United States historic place","extract":"The Marsh Rainbow Arch Bridge, also known as the Coon River Bridge and Rainbow Bend Access, is located south of Lake City, Iowa, United States. The 271-foot (83 m) three-span bridge carried traffic on Iberia Avenue over the North Raccoon River. It was designed by Des Moines engineer James Barney Marsh in his patented rainbow arch configuration, and constructed by the Iowa Bridge Company in 1914 for $10,970. It replaced a Howe truss bridge that had been built by the King Bridge Company of Cleveland. That bridge was put in service upstream and remained in use until 1983 when it was taken down. The Marsh arch bridge was bypassed in 1985, and remains in place in a county park. It was listed on t","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/56/20140309_79_Rainbow_Arch_Bridge%2C_Lake_City%2C_Iowa_-_Flickr_-_davidwilson1949.jpg/330px-20140309_79_Rainbow_Arch_Bridge%2C_Lake_City%2C_Iowa_-_Flickr_-_davidwilson1949.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":90,"lat":42.22955,"lon":-94.75459},"counts":{"claims":1,"history":0,"legends":1,"entities":0,"sources":1}}