Secondary Source

This rare cast-and wrought iron bridge was built in 1872. The bridge was located in Coshocton County, Ohio, crossing Wills Creek on Linton Township Road 144.

It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a rare example of early engineering design by one of the most famous engineers of his time, Squire Whipple. This bridge was designed and patented by him in 1841. He had designed other bridges but this was the most popular. The State of New York accepted this as their official design and it was used extensively on the Erie Canal. his design was illegally copied by many other bridge builders, depriving him of much deserved royalties. In 1847 Squire Whipple wrote his book on the design of bridges using scientific methods. This is the first time a book of this type had been written. It has been revised several times and copies can still be found in some libraries. His methods and formulas are still useful. He was considered one of the top engineers of the 19th Century and was the first honorary member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

When the retreating French Army and its allies reached the banks of the ice-filled Berezina River on the 23rd of November, 1812, they discovered their sole means of escape blocked by the smoldering ruins of the Borisov bridge. On the opposite bank lay a Russian force under Admiral Pavel Vasil'evich Chichagov, sent there specifically to cut off the French retreat from Russia. But with ingenuity born of desperation, French Engineer Jean-Baptiste Éblé and four hundred pontonniers managed to quietly build two new bridges using materials taken from nearby houses. Only days before this the French Army's Commander-in-Chief, Napoleon Bonaparte, had ordered all sixty boats of the army bridging train to be burned along with all other "nonessential" gear. General Éblé protested the decision at the time and discretely ordered two wagons of charcoal and six wagons of tools to be spared. He also assigned each of his men to carry a tool and some cramp irons. The Berezina bridges would be built using only these hand-tools, during the winter, for an army on the verge of disintegration.

The first covered bridge in America crossed the Schuylkill at High Street, now Market Street -- a familiar enough spot to generations of Drexel and Penn students and faculty! It replaced a pontoon bridge, and for that reason it was called The Permanent Bridge. It was not originally planned as a wooden or covered bridge, but rather as a stone bridge. The abutments and piers had been begun in 1800 and were complete in 1804, when the decision was made to complete the Permanent Bridge as a wooden bridge. For this purpose, Thomas Palmer, a bridge architect, was brought from New England. Palmer's bridge was braced with three arches and multiple kingposts. The suggestion that it be covered came from Judge Richard Peters, president of the Permanent Bridge Company. Palmer supported it, expecting the bridge to last thirty, and perhaps even forty years, if covered. Owen Biddle, a Philadelphia architect and builder, did the woodwork and ornamentation that were to make the bridge a memorable Philadelphia landmark.

The Berlin Iron Bridge Company was Connecticut's only large-scale fabricator of metal-truss bridges in the 19th century. Some 400 employees worked at its East Berlin plant, and hundreds of others worked in the field erecting the bridges. Over 1,000 Berlin bridges are believed to have been built before 1900. Most were in the Northeast, but even today Berlin bridges survive as far away as Texas. The company mostly built small-town highway bridges using its patented lenticular or parabolic truss. However, the Berlin Iron Bridge Company was prepared to take on any kind of fabrication work, including multiple-span city bridges, suspension bridges, drawbridges, and railroad bridges.

Hundreds of Berlin bridges were built in the company's home state of Connecticut. As of this date (August, 2001) only 13 highway bridges, 2 railroad bridges, and 2 millyard bridges are known to have survived.

Addressing the shortcomings of the Burr truss, namely its expense and specialized labor, Ithiel Town patented his lattice truss design in 1820. The lattice design fastened simple, diagonally set planks with treenails, or wooden pins, into crisscrossing truss system secured by top and bottom chords. Thus, Town's truss eliminated the need for large and expensive timbers, used in the Burr truss' series of arches, and streamlined the intricate, time-intensive labor of fastenig mortice-and-tenon joints into the simple slotting and wedging of treenails. Town's innovative truss design is visible today in two of Connecticut's three remaining covered bridges, Bull's Bridge in Kent and West Cornwall Bridge in Cornwall and Sharon.

Thomas Telford was born in Eskdale, Dumfrieshire to the son of a shepherd. Sadly his father had died three months before he was born.

On leaving school he was articled as a stone mason, working first in Edinburgh and then at Somerset House, London. There he came to the attention of William Pulteney, the wealthy MP for Shrewsbury and was soon appointed County Surveyor of Public Works for Shropshire in 1787. He set about a radical improvement of roads and bridges, later devising a new form of chipped stone road surface, but it was in canal construction that he excelled. He constructed a canal bridge on the Shrewsbury canal in the form of an iron trough which became the prototype for his magnificent Pontcysllte viaduct over the Dee Valley on the Llangollen canal. Telford's philosophy was to build on a grand scale, cutting through contours rather than going around them as did many of his predecessors. Such a approach was more costly, but yielded a more direct route and a more lasting structure.

Squire and Anna lived in Utica, N.Y., where, as a well-known civil engineer, inventor, and theoretician, he developed the first scientifically based rules for bridge construction. After graduating from Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., in 1830, he did survey work for several railroads and canal projects and made surveying instruments. In 1840 he invented a lock to weight canal boats.

The invention of the steam engine required bridges which could support heavy live loads and this motivated Squire to turn his attention to bridges. At the start of the 18th century, iron as a structural material was unknown, but as the century evolved, cast iron came into general use and wrought iron was in commercial use by century end. He invented two new truss designs and in 1853 completed a 146-foot span iron railroad bridge near West Troy (now Watervliet), N.Y.

Below are Newspaper articles, pictures, stories, commendations, or anything related to the Rivers the 150th Bridged to cross.

From the shores of Maine to "Frisco"--
Fighting Engineers are we!
We build our Countries bridges,
To make way for victory.
First to Fight for Rights and freedom,
and to keep the pathways clear,
we are proud to claim the title of
"Combat Engineers"

Where-ever we are needed
to build or repair,
you can bet that you will always find
The "150th" there.

The first iron bridge was constructed in 1779 at Coalbrookdale, a cast-iron arch. Cast iron then began to replace stone, quite successfully in arch bridges, but the attempt to use cast-iron beams ended in the failure of Robert Stephenson's Dee Bridge. Thereafter, cast iron was used for compressive members only, and engineers turned to wrought iron as a tougher, more reliable material, using it first in massive tubular girders riveted together from the small plates which were all that were available at the time. Wrought-iron link chains were used for suspension bridges by Telford and Brunel.

In the United States, iron was expensive and largely imported from Britian because of the primitive state of the domestic iron industry. Wood, however, was abundant and cheap, and it was good hardwood that made an excellent material of construction. Wood, therefore, was the material most often used for even major bridges, with spans greater than 50 feet. We are not talking here of the trestles and king-post trusses used for minor bridges, but bridges that crossed the rivers and gorges that abounded. Two kinds of bridges were in common use, the lattice truss and the trussed arch, of which there were as many varieties as there were builders. Bridge builders were self-taught craftsmen and amateurs, for the most part.

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