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Maple River Railroad Bridge

Blue Earth County, Minnesota
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Maple River Railroad Bridge

Looking East

Photo taken by John Marvig in June 2012

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Description 

This bridge is very hard or easy to get to. Depending on how much you like trespassing. I cannot recommend this, but the easiest (and only) way to get to the bridge is to walk along the property line of a local yard to the west abutment.

Facts 

Overview
Abandoned pratt through truss bridge over Maple River on Abandoned Milwaukee Road Railroad
Location
Good Thunder, Blue Earth County, Minnesota
Status
Derelict/abandoned, possibly on private property
History
Built unknown by Milwaukee Road, abandoned ca. 1974
Design
Pratt through truss with a 45 degree skew angle
6 Spans Trestle
1-130' Skewed Pratt Truss
6 Spans Trestle
Dimensions
Length of largest span: 130.0 ft.
Total length: 275.0 ft.
Skew angle
45 degrees
Also called
Good Thunder Bridge
Approximate latitude, longitude
+43.99529, -94.05914   (decimal degrees)
43°59'43" N, 94°03'33" W   (degrees°minutes'seconds")
Approximate UTM coordinates
15/415077/4871894 (zone/easting/northing)
USGS topographic map
Sterling Center
Inventory number
BH 52653 (Bridgehunter.com ID)

Categories 

Abandoned (1,371)
Beam (6,042)
Blue Earth County, Minnesota (16)
Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad (283)
Good Thunder, Minnesota (1)
Minnesota (916)
Pratt through truss (3,166)
Pratt truss (5,658)
 Railroad (4,070)
Skewed (4,080)
Span length 125-175 feet (2,954)
Through truss (9,205)
Timber stringer (1,858)
Total length 250-500 feet (3,371)
Truss (23,566)

Update Log 

  • December 7, 2012: Photo imported by Luke Harden
  • August 9, 2012: Updated by Daniel Hopkins: Added category "Railroad"
  • June 11, 2012: Updated by Luke Harden: Added category "Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad"
  • June 10, 2012: Added by John Marvig

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Comments 

Maple River Railroad Bridge
Posted December 7, 2012, by John Marvig (johnmarvig [at] chaska [dot] net)

Wanted to shoot from those angles Glenn, but the foliage was killing me. And it was about 100 degrees, plus poison ivy was bad.

Maple River Railroad Bridge
Posted December 7, 2012, by Glenn Hagfors (mnragnar [at] earthlink [dot] net)

Here is as I found this bridge on the afternoon of October 22nd, 2011. I have a friend who remembered seeing this bridge many years ago so we went on a search for it in Good Thunder. As large as it is, this bridge is quite well camouflaged from the road side. I was actually startled when the bridged "suddenly appeared" from the heavily wooded area we were searching intensely.

These and other of my photos can be found and mapped via Google Earth, Google Maps or Panoramio.

http://www.panoramio.com/users/mnragnar

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