Chinquapin Bridge
Photos
DSCF0230
taken by Elliott Johnson in May 2015
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA)
BH Photo #323923
Description
Found this little beauty on google earth as i was looking for the railroad trestle in the vicinity. The property owner of the south bank was kind enough to take me to it once i got to the end of chinquapin rd. he says it was originally an alignment of chinquapin rd. but all traces of this road have been wiped out on the other side of the river. no plaque as usual. This was used as the route 24 crossing before the route number and alignment was changed to the old 29 then current 29 crossing just south of this location.Facts
- Overview
- Abandoned Camelback through truss bridge over Sangamon River on Chinquapin Road (Abandoned section)
- Location
- Sangamon County, Illinois
- Status
- Derelict/abandoned
- Design
- Pinned Camelback through truss
- Also called
- Chinquapin Rd-Sangamon River Bridge
- Approximate latitude, longitude
- +39.86964, -89.67209 (decimal degrees)
39°52'11" N, 89°40'20" W (degrees°minutes'seconds") - Approximate UTM coordinates
- 16/271463/4416706 (zone/easting/northing)
- Quadrangle map:
- Springfield West
- Inventory number
- BH 67403 (Bridgehunter.com ID)
Update Log
- April 26, 2019: Updated by Erik Hoffman: Added category "Jack Arch Deck"
- May 3, 2015: Updated by Tony Dillon: Added truss type based on satellite imagery
- May 3, 2015: Added by Elliott Johnson
Sources
- Elliott Johnson - elliottsgon15 [at] hotmail [dot] com
- Tony Dillon - spansaver [at] hotmail [dot] com
Comments
I was very pleasantly surprised to find this posting on your website. I am writing my story about Cantrall, Illinois and earlier had run across a fascinating poem, the subject of which is the Chinquapin Road and Bridge, by June Powers Reilly. She refers to it as Chinkapin, which i note is closer to the pronunciation we used when i was a kid around the area (40-60’s). The poem was written in the mid 1930’s. I met June, a graceful and gracious lady, on a few occasions when i was doing a college project on Lincoln.
Your information is valuable to me as i approach my goal of finishing my Cantrall story. In the meantime, i want to share with you June’s poem. I hope you find this as interesting as i do. I have been convinced for some time that the early settlers to Cantrall crossed the river at the Chinkapin location; and Mrs. Reilly’s poem reinforces that contention.
http://tellersofweirdtales.blogspot.com/2012/02/june-power-r...
found this bridge on the 1930 USGS quad map for Springfield.
Glad to see this finally get a posting. I had asked several years ago in the forum if anyone had pictures or knowledge of this. I stumbled across it years ago while going up the Sangamon River to Petersburg. Bing showed it in aerial view. I would guess that this was the highway bridge for RT29 (RT24 when first designated) until the 1930's wider bridge was built further east of this bridge. IL state maps first show a route out of Springfield towards this bridge in the 1924 version. Funny how an older bridge survives but a newer one was destroyed? Great find and great to have it here!!
A very nice find Elliott!
Looking forward to seeing the pics!!
im trying to upload pictures here but will have to go through flickr since i keep running into problems with the uploader on this site
This page's URL is http://bridgehunter.com/il/sangamon/chinquapin-rd/
Mr. Johnson: I'm the editor of SangamonLink.org, the online encyclopedia of the Sangamon County Historical Society. The SCHS is a registered non-profit, and SangamonLink is a noncommercial site. As I understand it, your Creative Commons license allows me to use one of your photos on SangamonLink, and I have done so. If you object to that for any reason, I'll certainly take it down. But either way, I wanted to let you know about the use, and -- presuming you have no objections -- to tell you I appreciate the opportunity to show SangamonLink readers the current (well, close to it) status of the Chinkapin Bridge. You can read SangamonLink's entry about the bridge here: https://sangamoncountyhistory.org/wp/?p=13874
Thanks again.
Mike Kienzler