Old Chatham Road Bridge

This bridge, the Old Chatham Road bridge over Lick Creek, was not abandoned in the 1930s as is stated in this website.

The earliest routing of US 66 used this bridge and the Illinois Rt. 4 routing until 1930, when the more current routing of US 66 was opened through Glenarm, Farmersville, Litchfield and Mt. Olive.

This bridge remained open until around 1976, when Veteran's Parkway was opened from Wabash Avenue to just south of this bridge. At that time, Rt. 4 was moved to Veteran's Parkway. I remember crossing this bridge many times when it was still Ill. Rt. 4. Even after this stretch of road was no longer used as a highway, the bridge was still used as part of a driveway going to a farmhouse just south of the bridge. Eventually, the farmhouse's driveway was moved so that it is now accessed from the current Rt. 4 (Veteran's Parkway). Some sort of drainage pipe uses this bridge to cross over Lick Creek.

Just north of this bridge, two alignments of Old Rt. 4 can be seen. Currently you use an older cement stretch of road to access this bridge from Woodside Road / Spaulding Orchard Road, coming in from the north. To the east of that road is a newer stretch of asphalt covered road that was likely originally built in the 1930s. This road was what I knew of as Rt. 4 in the '60s and '70s and connected to Chatham Road at Woodside Road / Spaulding Orchard Road. A portion of that roadway was removed when Veteran's Parkway was opened. I remember several miles of this stretch of Rt. 4 being brick when I was a kid. The Lick Creek bridge had a brick roadway in the '60s. In many places, the newer brick roadway was built on top of the original cement roadway.

This appears to be similar in design to the Honey Creek Bridge ( http://bridgehunter.com/il/macoupin/honey-creek/ ) , which would date it around 1920