The Mars Hill Bridge in Wapello County, Iowa, is among 10 winners in the Portland Cement Association's (PCA) Tenth Biennial Bridge Awards Competition.

The competition recognizes excellence in design and construction of concrete bridges and is co-sponsored by Roads and Bridges magazine.

By far the smallest bridge among the award winners, the Mars Hill Bridge is a simple, single-span bridge with a three-beam cross section. As the first ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) girder bridge in North America, however, it represents a significant step toward "The Bridge of the Future," utilizing 110-feet ultra high performance concrete (UHPC) girders that do not have any rebar for shear stirrups. It was built with Ductal, a "revolutionary" UHPC that offers a unique combination of superior properties including ductility, durability, aesthetic flexibility, and amazing strengths including a compressive strength up to 30,000 pounds per square inch. With optimized girder crosssections, UHPC bridges can have low lifecycle costs due to efficient design, faster construction due to lighter members and longer life from superior durability.

Owned by Wapello County, the project was a partnership between the IDOT, FHWA and Iowa State University's Bridge Engineering Center.

The bridge was built by Bloomfield Bridge and Culvert, Inc., with materials from Lafarge Canada Inc.