Parshallburg Bridge wiped out

This is depressing: the Parshallburg/Ditch Road Bridge in Michigan, an extremely rare Thacher truss, was pushed into the river by flooding and ice. What's even more depressing is the local reaction:

"All our grants and funding are now in the river. Well, those grants are our tax money.

"Instead of moving the bridge here, they should have just destroyed it."

At least this other report is more positive, with talk of restoring the bridge.

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On this date in history...

On December 15, 1967, at approximately 4:50 PM, the Silver Bridge that crossed the Ohio River between Point Pleasant, West Virgina and Kanauga, Ohio, collapsed during rush hour. 46 people perished in the collapse. The 1928 bridge, which took its name from its aluminum paint, used an eyebar chain design that was new at the time of its construction. After the collapse, another eyebar chain design Ohio River crossing upriver was immediately closed for inspection.

Eyebar #330, closer to the Ohio side of the bridge, had developed a tiny stress crack, perhaps in manufacture. When the crack reached 0.1" in depth, it went critical and failed soon after. Because all components of the bridge were balanced together, the failure of one component caused all the others to fail. Witnesses reported that the bridge collapse took about one minute. (The stress crack failure was discovered in the failure analysis. At the time, an inspection technique that would have located the crack was not available, short of dismantling the bridge.) The mysteries of "The Mothman Prophesies" add to the mystique of the area, and to the bridge collapse.

At the time of its construction, the typical automobile was light and small, a typical Model T weighed 1,500 pounds but by 1967, family cars were twice the size and two to two and a half times the weight. Bumper-to-bumper traffic jams, unheard of in 1928, were common in 1967. The bridge was severely overloaded on a daily basis.

As a result of the Silver Bridge disaster, the NBIS, National Bridge Inspection Standard, was created. It mandates that all bridges in the United States, longer than 20 feet, must be inspected every two years.

A contemporary report on the collapse can be found on the Time Magazine Website as can numerous other reports on the Internet.

A duke618 video about the bridge and the collapse was placed on YouTube. Be advised, there are some rather graphic images of the debris but this is a video worth watching.

During your busy day, take a moment to remember the 46 souls who plunged to their deaths when the "Gateway to the South" collapsed, 41 years ago today.

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Site news

By popular demand, I've posted the entire National Bridge Inventory in tab-delimited format suitable for importing into your favorite spreadsheet program. It's massive (30 MB download, almost 300 MB uncompressed), but is much more convenient than the crazy file format available from the Federal government.

Also, we reached a new milestone yesterday: the 30,000th photo was uploaded to the site. It was a photo by Gene McCluney of the Little Deep Fork Creek Bridge in Creek County, Oklahoma.

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More bad news

• Burlington, Iowa, is looking to replace the Cascade Bridge, a rare Baltimore deck truss built in 1896. This would be quite a significant loss.

• The situation doesn't look good for New Franklin, Missouri, where city officials voted to support the demolition of the viaduct on Highway 5. As I've argued earlier, this expensive project will leave the town with nothing to show for it except for a less safe grade crossing with the Katy Trail.

• The South Street Bridge in Philadelphia, a 1923 deck-girder bridge over the Schuylkill River, has been closed to traffic this week in preparation for demolition and replacement.

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December bad news roundup

• Cole County, Missouri, once had a nice collection of through truss bridges. Those days are rapidly coming to a close with the demolition this week of the Walnut Acres Road Bridge, a 1913 pin-connected Parker.

• The Harrods Creek Bridge near Louisville, Kentucky, has been closed to traffic because inspectors deemed the railing (concrete balustrades) to be unsafe. I wonder what would happen if these inspectors were to visit some of the bridges in Missouri and Arkansas that don't have guardrails at all?

• Arsonists have struck yet another covered bridge: the Gudgeonville Covered Bridge in Erie County, Pennsylvania.

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The saga of the Vida Shaw Bridge

Bridge issue back on the starting line is the headline from last month about the Vida Shaw Bridge in Iberia Parish, Louisiana. This through truss swing bridge is at the center of a bizarre historic preservation battle. The one-lane bridge had been slated for removal and replacement but those plans were dropped at the last minute. According to the article,

As part of the bridge replacement process, the state was required to determine if the bridge had historical value before taking bids on the project. The state decided that the bridge had no historic value, but was later "trumped" by the Keeper of the National Register for Historic Preservation, which deemed it eligible for historic preservation.

That's quite an unexpected victory. However, the bridge's future is still in doubt. It was listed as one of Ten Most Endangered Historic Sites in Louisiana for 2007-08. While there's significant local support for preserving the bridge, there's also significant local support for building a modern replacement.

Before any decision is made, officials should look at the example of the Lorrain Bridge in Calcasieu Parish, another swing bridge that was at the center of an historic preservation battle. That bridge was successfully rehabilitated to modern standards while providing a mild tourism boost. Sometimes win-win situations are actually possible.

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Bad news from the Twin Cities

You know the old line on TV about the police detective who is only days away from retirement when he gets shot? That's a lot like the situation at the Rock Island Bridge over the Mississippi River near St. Paul, Minnesota.

The National Park Service had given tours of the bridge one day in October as part of an effort to preserve a portion of it. The event was a success, with John Weeks writing, "An unexpectedly large number of people turned out for the tours, giving the Park Service hope that there is a large amount of interest in saving at least part of this old bridge."

The future was starting to look bright. However, just a few weeks later on November 21, a 200-foot section of the east approach collapsed. County officials now want to move quickly to demolish the entire bridge, so it seems likely that little if any of the bridge will be saved.

The situation isn't completely hopeless; there is precedent for saving bridges like this. St. Louis rehabilitated two Mississippi River bridges that were also in terrible condition: the Eads Bridge and the McKinley Bridge. Like the Rock Island span, these two former toll bridges had been allowed by their previous owners to fall into absolute shambles, especially their east approaches. Drivers avoided the rough pavement and the approach spans that looked like they could collapse under the slightest breeze.

The situation is much different today. After undergoing extensive renovations, both bridges now carry highway and pedestrian traffic (plus light rail on the Eads Bridge). It's hard to imagine St. Louis without these bridges. Could St. Paul deliver a similar historic preservation coup? I'm not holding my breath, but it's not completely out of the question.

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We've reached a milestone

I'm pleased to annouce that bridgehunter.com now has photos of five thousand bridges. The 5,000th bridge, submitted today by Eddie Douthitt, is the Underwood Bridge in Whitfield County, Georgia. Thanks again to everybody who has contributed photos and information over the last few years.

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The Bridge Formerly Known As The Triborough

New York City has sparked controversy by officially renaming the Triborough Bridge as the "Robert F. Kennedy Bridge." Despite a push to eliminate the old name from all road signs (at great expense), it seems likely that New Yorkers will continue to use the historic name. And why not? Triborough, like all good bridge names, neatly summarizes the purpose of the structure.

Let's hope this doesn't become a trend. I'm surprised that New York hasn't already tried to sell naming rights to its landmarks bridges. Can you imagine the "Brooklyn Bridge Presented By AT&T" or the "Bank of America Queensboro Bridge With Additional Funding Provided By General Motors"?

In a perfect world, bridges and other public works projects would be named for the people who actually make them possible: the taxpayers. But no politician would dare call something the "Taxpayers Memorial Bridge" or the "Bridge Funded By Drivers Like You Paying Exorbitant Tolls."

I frequently field questions from people asking -- or arguing -- about the names listed for bridges on this website. As a general rule, the most commonly used name is preferred, regardless of whether that name is "official" or not. Since this website is about history, I try to stick with names that best reflect a bridge's history. Unless "Robert F. Kennedy Bridge" becomes a standard by most New Yorkers, it will remain the Triborough here.

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Iowa flood updates

We have good news and bad news about the recovery efforts from the Iowa flooding in June.

Bad news: Charles City wants to build a replacement for their destroyed suspension footbridge, but it probably won't look anything like the historic bridge. The culprit is red tape. Since Federal dollars will be used to reconstruct the bridge, it must meet modern construction standards, including the Americans with Disabilities Act. It's not exactly clear why a suspension bridge wouldn't meet ADA requirements, but evidently the city might be stuck with some kind of cable-stayed design -- a landmark, yes, but not an historic landmark.

Good news: The remaining two spans of the damaged Sutliff Bridge passed its first inspection. Assuming that the bridge passes further inspections, the historic spans will be allowed to remain in place, and hopefully some kind of solution (including the possibility of an authentic reconstruction) will be found to fill the missing span.

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