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familiar with the area for forty-five years, testified they have always believed the road was a public right-of-way. Residents made complaints regarding obstructions or disturbances on the road directly to the county. In the 1990s, the county officially named the road "Dry Hollow Road" and posted a street name sign at the road's northwest corner. The county has also posted a stop sign, speed limit warning, and dead end notice on the roadway in dispute. Some of the signs were posted over twenty-five years ago. Past the disputed section of Dry Hollow Road appear other warning signs and gates posted by the county. The posting of public traffic signs are specific acts directed to warn road users that the county controls the right-of-way. The county's conduct goes beyond mere use of the roadway. Decades of maintaining the surface, renaming the roadway, and responding to plaintiffs' and other area residents' complaints about the road's condition or hazardous drivers, prove the county's use was under claim of right and hostile to any private ownership claims to Dry Hollow Road.
*3 The plaintiffs were also provided actual notice of the county's adverse use. The plaintiffs appear to be closely acquainted with the area since family members have owned land along the road since the sixties. The plaintiffs had been on the road prior to buying the property, saw the signs, and understood that the county maintained the road. Indeed, the plaintiffs acknowledged the county's right to the roadway was superior. On four occasions since the plaintiffs purchased the property in 1998, plaintiff Leo Simon has sought permission from the county to do work on or near Dry Hollow Road. Each permit was granted. In one letter accompanying the permit, the county engineer warned the plaintiff to, "please remember that no matter what work you do in the right-of-way, you need to get a permit from our office."
The Iowa Supreme Court has previously found that an owner is charged with notice that the public has a claim of ownership when the owner knows that public expenditures are being used to repair or maintain a road. Collins Trust, 599 N.W.2d 406, 465. This is because it is generally known that public bodies do not have authority to use public funds toward private property. Id. The county's use of Dry Hollow Road has been under claim of right, hostile, open, notorious, and continuous for much longer than the requisite ten-year statutory period. Although the plaintiffs acquired the property less than ten years ago, the county's adverse use established the prescriptive easement against plaintiffs' predecessors in title. See Schwenker v. Sagers, 230 N.W.2d 525, 528 (Iowa 1975) (finding transfer of servient estate within statutory period does not bar prescriptive easement when claimant asserted adverse use for statutory period against prior owners). We affirm the district court's finding Dubuque County acquired a prescriptive easement to Dry Hollow Road through the Simon property.
SCOPE OF THE EASEMENT. The plaintiffs contend the district court erred in finding the scope of the county's easement extended twenty-two feet for roadway surface plus five additional feet on each side for keeping the roadway clear. The scope of an easement is only that which "is reasonably necessary and convenient for the purpose for which it was created." Flynn v. Michigan-Wisconsin Pipeline Co., 161 N.W.2d 56, 61 (Iowa 1968). When a highway is acquired by prescriptive easement the actual use defines the easement boundaries. Bangert v. Osceola County, 456 N.W.2d 183, 188 (Iowa 1990) (citing Davis v. Town of Bonaparte, 137 Iowa 196, 204, 114 N.W. 896, 899 (1908)).
The relative rights of the parties affect the scope of a prescriptive easement as well. Under Iowa law,
The easement holder has the right to use the [easement] in the manner and for the purposes it was intended to serve. He cannot use it in a way which imposes additional burdens on the owner of the land through which it runs. The easement holder's rights are not exclusive, and servient owners may use the easement strip for any purpose not inconsistent with the easement. Neither may use the [easement] in violation of the rights of the other.
*4 Schwenker, 230 N.W.2d at 527 (quoting Schwartz v. Grossman, 173 N.W.2d 57, 59-60 (Iowa 1969)). The servient owner's rights may be used to prevent expansion of a prescriptive easement but are not to be used "to erase or erode rights to such uses after they have been established by prescription." Schwenker, 230 N.W.2d at 527.
The parties at hand dispute the boundaries of Dry Hollow Road through the Simon property. Dry Hollow Road varies in width along its path. Testimony regarding the width of the road surface through