How Did We Get Here?

An interim planning committee of nine local professionals in the tourism and business industry spent one year researching the program and completing the application for designation, which included mapping of the route, analysis of the intrinsic values that define Madison County, cataloging of the resources along the route, and meetings with representatives of already established byways. The application was submitted in the fall of 2014, and we received our designation in August, 2016. The Covered Bridges Scenic Byway Council was formed, consisting of 11 local business, tourism, county and city representatives.

The council includes:
* Jared McDonald (Chair), Director of the Madison County Historical Complex
* Jim Liechty (Vice Chair), Director of the Madison County Conservation Board
* Heather Riley (Secretary), Executive Director of the Madison County Chamber of Commerce
* Jennifer Handsaker (Treasurer), Co-owner of The Pumpkin Ranch
* Teddi Yaeger (Project Manager), Tourism Coordinator and Marketing Manager for the Madison County Chamber of Commerce
* John Pletchette, Director of Winterset Parks & Recreation
* Dawn Vetter, Member of the St. Charles Library Board and the St. Charles Community Foundation.
* Maxine Bussanmas, Mayor of Bevington and co-owner of Bussanmas Towing & Recovery
* Brian Downes, Executive Director of the John Wayne Birthplace & Museum
* Tom Leners, Executive Director of the Madison County Development Group
* Marianne Fons, Co-Founded of Fons & Porter's Love of Quilting and Board President of the Iowa Quilt Museum

The Byway Council received a three-year contract from the Iowa DOT for the development of the Covered Bridges Scenic Byway on April 1, 2018, and work quickly got underway! We are responsible for completing a Corridor Management Plan and an Interpretative Plan for our byway within that three-year project.

Ribbon-Cutting!

A scenic byway grant-funded public art piece by Michael Goodall entitled "The George Stout Storybook" was completed in May. George Leslie Stout was born in Winterset in 1897, and resided there through high school. Stout was an American art conservation specialist and museum director who founded the first laboratory in the United States to study art conservation, as well as the first journal on the subject of art conservation. A Navy reservist for some time, Stout was placed on active duty in 1943, and soon after joined the Twelfth Army Group. Because of his art conservation background, he was one of the first recruited to the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section (MFAA). The group was charged with the protection of and documentation of damages to European cultural monuments during World War II, as well as the investigation, location, recovery, and repatriation of art that had been plundered by the Nazis. The main subject of a book and movie called "The Monuments Men", Stout was portrayed by George Clooney in the film (though his name was changed). Clooney accurately captured Stout's personality, especially his humbleness, according to his granddaughter Leslie Hayes Stout Marks who attended the ribbon-cutting along with her uncle Richard Stout in May of 2018.