Loosveldt Bridge
Description
This bridge and its road has apparently been transferred to private ownership of the Budd Family Ranch.Information From Historic Bridge Inventory
From Historic Bridge Inventory By Clayton B. FraserWhen a massive ice jam smashed the bridge over the Loup River south of Columbus in 1886, the Platte County Supervisors immediately began considering a replacement. They held a special county-wide election to authorize a bond issue for the new structure, and then awarded a construction contract to George E. King of Des Moines, western agent for the King Iron Bridge Company. Consisting of four 250-foot through trusses, the Columbus Loup River Bridge was extensive, and King worked until October 1888 to complete it. The bridge carried heavy traffic, first as a county road, then the Lincoln Highway and finally on U.S. Highway 30, until its replacement with another truss in 1933.
That August, heavy flooding washed out virtually all of the bridges over the Niobrara River in Sheridan County. The county commissioners purchased two spans of the Columbus bridge and hired the General Construction Company to erect them at the Loosveldt and Colclesser crossings south of Rushville. The county maintained the Loosveldt Bridge until 1984, at which time it was sold to the adjacent landowner. Now called the Budd Bridge, it carries traffic at the headquarters for the Budd family ranch.
In its present location in the Sand Hills region, far removed from the Loup River of eastern Nebraska, the Loosveldt Bridge has lost the historical association of the original Columbus Bridge. But this structure is technologically significant, even in its new location. Although numerous wrought iron bridges were erected in eastern Nebraska in the 1880s, only a handful remain today. None are on the scale of the Colclesser or Loosveldt trusses. Built by a nationally prominent bridge erector, both structures are important to the history of bridge building in Nebraska for their representation of the state's earliest iron truss construction.
Facts
- Overview
- Through truss bridge over Niobrara River on a county road
- Location
- Sheridan County, Nebraska
- Status
- Open to traffic
- History
- Built 1888 Over Loup River In Columbus, Nebraska; Relocated Here In 1933
- Builder
- - George E. King Bridge Co. of Des Moines, Iowa
- Design
- Pin-connected Baltimore through truss
- Dimensions
-
Length of largest span: 166.0 ft.
Total length: 167.0 ft.
Deck width: 15.7 ft.
Vertical clearance above deck: 18.0 ft.
- Recognition
- Posted to the National Register of Historic Places on June 29, 1992
- Also called
- Niobrara River Bridge
Budd Bridge - Approximate latitude, longitude
- +42.58138, -102.38431 (decimal degrees)
42°34'53" N, 102°23'04" W (degrees°minutes'seconds") - Approximate UTM coordinates
- 13/714648/4717646 (zone/easting/northing)
- Quadrangle map:
- Rushville SW
- Average daily traffic (as of 2011)
- 10
- Inventory numbers
- NRHP 92000730 (National Register of Historic Places reference number)
NE C008124905P (Nebraska bridge number)
BH 24657 (Bridgehunter.com ID) - Inspection report (as of September 2017)
- Overall condition: Fair
Superstructure condition rating: Fair (5 out of 9)
Substructure condition rating: Fair (5 out of 9)
Deck condition rating: Satisfactory (6 out of 9)
Sufficiency rating: 27.6 (out of 100)
View more at BridgeReports.com
Update Log
- March 6, 2014: Updated by James McCray: Changed posted location of bridge to reflect correct position and bridge.
- June 14, 2010: Updated by Robert Elder: Added bridge to George E, King Category
- June 14, 2010: Essay added by Nathan Holth
Sources
- Nathan Holth
- Information From Historic Bridge Inventory
- Robert Elder - robertelder1 [at] gmail [dot] com
- James McCray - jamesinslocomb [at] yahoo [dot] com
Comments
Nathan:
I think that we may have solved a puzzle here. Also, as you probably noticed from the updates, I have added this bridge to the George E. King Category.
Robert,
Thanks for pointing out this bridge in Kansas! HAER never appears to have figured it out, but this bridge definitely came from the same 4-span Columbus Loup River Bridge! It has the same 248 foot length.
A third span was also located to the Sheridan County (it was shortened during relocation), but it appears to be lost today. Its mentioned with a photo on the page below:
http://www.nebraskahistory.org/histpres/nebraska/sheridan.ht...
Nathan:
I am glad that you have discovered this bridge. An identical bridge was moved from Nebraska to Kansas where it carried vehicular traffic over the Delaware River at the town of Half Mound.
The Half Mound Bridge was declared eligible for the NRHP and then promptly demolished and replaced by a UCEB.
This amazing bridge is probably one of the rarest and most important bridges in Nebraska!
This page's URL is http://bridgehunter.com/ne/sheridan/C008124905P/
After some researching I noticed that this bridge was posted for the wrong bridge.....there are two through trusses in this county and this is the westernmost one. The other, to the east, is also a King Bridge, but has not been added yet, but was posted incorrectly as the Loosveldt Bridge. I am doing this right now.