Briscoe Bridge

Mike, I love your oblique photo. I enjoy the flood photos!

Hey Melissa! I thought it looked bad at my recent visit to Flood City, but yours beats mine! Flood waters give me the creeps!!

Oh you would!! 😂😂😂

Of course I enjoyed the carnage of the flood lol

Great pics Melissa!

Part of me wishes they had either relocated the bridge to a less soggy environment or at least raised it up several feet to mitigate the potential damage... But yet I guess it has survived here for 127 years now.

Holy crap! Floods give me the creeps! Great bridge, though

Flooding Today

I think one thing they should have done that they didn't with the restoration of this bridge is to put runner planks on the deck--it would look right with a bridge of this era, and it would make the base deck last a lot longer, as they would just have to replace the runner planks as they wear out...

I typically like bold colors that stand out too, but somehow, this one to me really looks right in the gray. The Boner bridge looks good in its bright red too. There are so many historic bridges in Indiana, I wish I had a month all to myself so I could visit them all! I just moved to Wisconsin from Florida, and they have one or two here and there, but nothing like the Hoosier state! Florida is just plain pitiful as far as historic bridges go, however...

Glad you were able to stop in Indiana and see this and the Boner span...definitely 2 of the Hoosier State's finest!

I have mixed feeling on the Grey paint as it almost looks too much like primer for my liking. I have gotten rather fond of them being done in bright Reds and Oranges. But hey, at least it IS restored and ready to go for many more years! I tip my hat to the folks in Warrick County for their efforts in saving this and the bowstring spans!

I got to see this beautiful bridge on my way from Florida to Wisconsin; terrific job on the restoration! The gunmetal gray color looks nice with the new wood deck.

Julie: I saw your message and set you an email to your gmail account with my contact information. Please feel free to contact me and I can give you more information about this bridge restoration project.

great work. who else was on your team? we at Workin' Bridges sre developing a roster of engineers, craftsmen, fabrixators to work in different states.

I visited the Briscoe Bridge again to collect some more photographs of the completed restoration project. As the structural engineer-of-record for this project, I am very pleased with the final results. Hopefully there will be many years that others will be able to enjoy and appreciate this old bridge.

Construction is complete and the Briscoe Bridge has been opened to traffic. Overall, I think that it looks nice and hopefully the public will appreciate the final product. It does not appear that the County is going to have any type of re-opening ceremony.

Good to hear! I figured they were taken down...hopefully just to clean and paint. It's definitely good to put new brackets up as well!

Do you know when the dedication is? A group of us from the Historic Bridge Conference will be down there on Sunday to see it.

The contractor has the bridge plaques. The hardware was nearly gone so they were temporarily taken down, and will be reinstalled prior to the official opening.

Well...it looks a whole lot better than it did last September when I saw it!

But where did the plaques go? Hopefully not on somebody's wall.

new paint and deck

its all wrapped up like a present

Looking good Bob!...thank you for the update!

Glad to see the added supports have been removed as well!

Update: The north kingspost is repaired, looks about ready for paint and the deck.

This is indeed good news that the rehabilitation has begun!

I visited the old bridge last September and found it in pretty bad shape. To my knowledge this is the only Whipple truss that is bracketed by Kingpost ponies. Along with the nearby Boner Road bowstring this will be a must-visit area.

Thanks for the update Bob!

I checked on the bridge today for the first time this year, nobody around but signs of progress. The damaged king post was taken apart and some of the railings removed. I'm hoping they will remove the support and make the north king post functional again.

INDOT's construction website shows that the contract to rehabilitate this bridge has been let and the apparent low bidder has been identified. I think that once all the contractural procedures have been reviewed, work should begin on this bridge shortly.

Can't wait to see it restored!

I saw it in September and it is in terrible shape right now. Have some pics taken in bad weather that show some of the problems...will try to add them this weekend.

The contract and plans for the rehab are now online at INDOT (Contract 29596). The completion date for the contract is November 15, 2012.

While choosing to not raise the bridge will mean that people like me who are stupid enough to drive 45 minutes out of their way to try to visit this bridge and nearby Boner Bridge after any appreciable rainfall will continue to find they have wasted their time, I don't think the bridge itself is at risk of being swept away or damaged by floods. When I was there, the floodwaters appeared to be a result of the Ohio River rising rather than raging water flowing down the river the bridge actually crosses. There was little flow observed in the flood waters. The famous Zoarville Station Bridge in Ohio is a similar situation. It will flood sometimes, but there is no water flow, hence no danger to the bridge.

I had heard this was in the works and am glad it is getting started very soon. I don't know if the flooding is a common occurrence or just during extreme flooding, but I hope they have made the right decision in not raising it.

A Whipple Truss is special in it's own right... but bracket it with a set of Kingpost ponies and you have a very unique landmark span!

The bridge will be rehabilitated and the rehabilitation contract is due for letting this fall. A public hearing was held a few months ago and the plans were available for viewing. It will be repaired and strengthened in place and will be repainted, but it will not be raised.

Warrick County has decided to rehabilitate this unique structure at it's original site. There had been some talk about moving it to a trail, but I was concerned that the Kingpost ponies might be separated from the Whipple truss.

Hopefully they can address the flooding issue and maybe raise the span several feet.

I have a feeling the relocation is put off for now, the trail section where it would have gone is being completed now and there is no funding information for the bridge. Hopefully if it is replaced they will store it instead of scrapping it. It gets flooded about every spring it seems, but they didn,'t clean it up after earlier this years flooding and then it was hit again last week.

i thought i had seen somewhere is bridge was scheduled for reuse on a trail. might be wrong though. as for the flooding, ill be honest you did happen to pass through this area after a ton of rain. we didn't get as much as tennessee, the ohio river was covering parts of the waterfront park from flooding. but i agree would be awesome to see it moved.

The bridge deck is likely all warped and messed up because the entire deck and half the bridge was underwater this past Sunday (May 9, 2010) when Rick and I were at the bridge trying to photo-document the bridge for HistoricBridges.org as part of our Indiana/Illinois bridge trip. This bridge was an utter failure for us. We also could not reach the nearby Boner Bridge due to flooding. The one photo I got of Briscoe Bridge, which shows the kingposts (the most important part of the bridge) COMPLETELY submersed in water. This was one of the most frustrating things I have ever experienced during a bridge trip short of finding a bridge demolished.

I am all for relocating the bridge someplace else, as long as the new location does not flood like it does here.

I also talked to someone down there that reiterated that this bridge is supposed to restored for trail use. My biggest concern is that the Kingpost ponies stay with the Whipple through truss.

This is a classic WIBC bridge - complete with Kingpost trusses. Given Indiana's excellent track record recently, I would hope that this bridge gets reused as a pedestrian bridge somewhere.

This bridge is listed to be replaced in 2011 in a report I seen. It was going to be reused on the Newburgh rivertown trail like the Warner Road bridge, but I haven't seen any mention of this for awhile and that section of the trail is being built right now. The deck isn't holding up very well without any maintenance.

I just hope they are planning to save the Old River Bridge like they did the one on Boner Road. A Whipple is rare enought.....but those Kingpost ponies are very unique.

Hopefully, some moron with a fully loaded lumber truck won't try to cross it, like the poor Wallace Bridge in Arkansas.

It's signed as closed now but people are still using it for the present.

This is a Whipple thru truss with rare Kingpost ponies on both ends. It has a pending status but will hopefully be restored. It was built by the Wrought Iron Bridge Co.