Fontanelle Railroad Trestle

Herb Owens Print, Fontanelle Railroad Trestle

This painting shows the entrance into the town of Fontanelle, just 5 miles west of Greenfield, on Highway 92.  The railroad trestle passing over the highway was the route for the Cumberland Rose Railroad which serviced the tracks from Creston to Cumberland starting in 1879.  The tracks and trestle were disbanded in the early 1990s.

Herb Owens was a reporter for the Des Moines Tribune, a companion afternoon paper to the Des Moines Register.  He wrote the “Along the Way” column that featured stories about Iowa people in small towns.  After he retired in the early 1960’s, Owens took up painting.  Greenfield native Hugh Sidey, a Time magazine journalist who covered the White House for decades, commissioned Owens to paint a number of favorite local scenes.  The Greenfield Chamber selected six of these paintings to reprint on watercolor paper.  Each print measures 11x14 inches and is unframed.