77 Iowa 638 | Iowa | 1889
Plaintiff is a resident and tax-payer of Dickinson county, and defendants are the said county, its auditor, treasurer, the members of its board of supervisors, and the person who contracted to build the bridge in controversy. The contractor did not appear in the district court, and the cause was there continued, as to him, for service. He is not therefore a party to this appeal. On the nineteenth day of June, 1888, the board of supervisors of Dickinson county ordered the construction of a public bridge across a navigable body of water known as “East Okoboji lake,” and on the first day of the next August entered into a contract for the building of the bridge for the price of forty-nine hundred dollars'. The contract required the bridge to be eleven hundred feet long and sixteen feet wide; to be constructed with a draw, which could be opened for the passage of boats, and which would furnish the only means for the passage of boats through the bridge. A highway has been established on each side of the lake to points which the bridge is designed to connect, but no highway has been located where it is proposed to build the bridge, and no proceedings have been instituted for that purpose. No special act of congress or of the general assembly of the state of Iowa, giving authority to the
Chapter 93 of the Acts of the Seventh General Assembly conferred upon the district courts power to authorize the construction of bridges across the navigable rivers of the state, and gave to county judges authority to erect bridges over streams at points where they were not navigable. That chapter was incorporated in the revision of 1860, with the act of the eighth general assembly, which provided for boards of supervisors,
Affirmed.