Rockville Bridge
Description
In the 1920s, the National Park service was developing an automobile tour route that would simplify access to southern Utah and norther Arizona parks. They built this bridge, which removed about 30 miles from the approximately 90 mile route from Zion National Park to Pipe Spring National Monument.In 2012, Utah DOT inspection showed significant deterioration and reduced the load rating from 25 to 14 tons. Federal funds were to replace this bridge with a new two-lane bridge. The town of Rockville now owns the bridge, so the 247 residents were polled which indicating a preference for keeping the old bridge.
In 2015 Rockville successfully petitioned for the scope of work to change from replacement to rehabilitation, thereby saving the last of the automotive Parker through truss bridges in the state.
While most of the budget is covered by federal funds, about $170,000 needs to be provided by the locals. The town has done volunteer fund raising to assist in saving their bridge.
The rehabilitation also includes upgrades to achieve a modern 25 ton weight rating. The upgrades include: Replacing the stringers with stronger ones Bolting "cover plates" to the bottom of the existing floor beams Bolting plates to the first diagonals to improve compression loading
Facts
- Overview
- Through truss bridge over Virgin River on Bridge Street in Rockville
- Location
- Rockville, Washington County, Utah
- Status
- Open to traffic
- History
- Built 1924, NRHP listed 1995, condemend 2012, successful petition for rehab 2016.
- Builders
- - C.F. Dinsmore Co. of Ogden. Utah (Erector)
- Minneapolis Steel & Machinery Co. of Minneapolis, Minnesota (Fabricator)
- Design
- one lane,11 panel, riveted, Parker, through truss
- Dimensions
-
Length of largest span: 216.9 ft.
Total length: 222.1 ft.
Deck width: 17.7 ft.
Vertical clearance above deck: 15.9 ft.
- Recognition
- Posted to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995
- Also called
- Bridge Street Bridge
- Approximate latitude, longitude
- +37.15889, -113.03750 (decimal degrees)
37°09'32" N, 113°02'15" W (degrees°minutes'seconds") - Approximate UTM coordinates
- 12/319078/4114442 (zone/easting/northing)
- Quadrangle map:
- Springdale West
- Elevation
- 82063740 ft. above sea level
- Average daily traffic (as of 2010)
- 252
- Inventory numbers
- NRHP 95000982 (National Register of Historic Places reference number)
BH 33537 (Bridgehunter.com ID) - Inspection report (as of February 2016)
- Overall condition: Fair
Superstructure condition rating: Satisfactory (6 out of 9)
Substructure condition rating: Satisfactory (6 out of 9)
Deck condition rating: Good (7 out of 9)
Sufficiency rating: 31.2 (out of 100)
View more at BridgeReports.com
Update Log
- August 5, 2017: Updated by Fmiser: wrote description, added design info, expanded one-line history
- May 18, 2015: Updated by Nathan Holth: Add NRHP Number
- April 16, 2014: Updated by Luke Harden: Added builder
- April 16, 2014: New photos from Steve Conro
- September 20, 2013: HAER photos posted by Nathan Holth
- March 30, 2013: New photo from Craig Philpott
- May 3, 2010: New Street View added by Craig Philpott
Sources
- Craig Philpott - craigphilpott63 [at] gmail [dot] com
- Todd Wilson
- HAER UT-74 - Rockville Bridge, Spanning North Fork Virgin River at Rockville cut-off, Rockville, Washington County, UT
- Steve Conro - sconro [at] yahoo [dot] com
- Luke
- Washington County Historical Society
- Nathan Holth
- Fmiser - fmiser [at] gmail [dot] com
Comments
This is awesome!
We need all communities to Love their historic bridges like this one does!!!
Thanks, Pamela.
The owner info is now updated, and other information improved too.
Please note on your records that the Rockville Bridge is owned by the Town of Rockville and not the National Park Service. Federal and local funding is in place and the bridge will be restored in 2018. Restoration efforts will bring the bridge back to its previous 25 ton load rating while preserving its historic structure and place on the National Register of Historic Places.
Rockville is proud of this bridge and extremely pleased that efforts to raise funds to preserve it have been successful.
Thank you!
Preservation efforts:
http://www.thespectrum.com/story/news/2015/10/10/rockville-d...
NRHP Nomination Form Attached.
This page's URL is http://bridgehunter.com/ut/washington/53019C/
Rehabilitation complete: https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2019/05/04/raw-roc...