Poasttown Bridge (1888)
Facts
- Overview
- Lost Whipple through truss bridge over Great Miami River on Germantown Road (Modern-day OH-4)
- Location
- Butler County, Ohio
- Status
- Replaced by a new bridge
- History
- Built 1888; Partially destroyed in the 1913 flood.
- Design
- 16-panel Whipple through truss
- Approximate latitude, longitude
- +39.54000, -84.38379 (decimal degrees)
39°32'24" N, 84°23'02" W (degrees°minutes'seconds") - Approximate UTM coordinates
- 16/724824/4379972 (zone/easting/northing)
- Inventory number
- BH 94981 (Bridgehunter.com ID)
Update Log
- November 6, 2021: Updated by Tony Dillon: Fixed my errant mis-read
- November 5, 2021: Added by Paul Plassman
Sources
- Paul Plassman
- Middletown Historical Society - Info and photo
- Tony Dillon - spansaver [at] hotmail [dot] com
Comments
Paul,
I would say let's leave it be for now and see if any more info turns up. If I'm seeing correctly there are 2 Whipple spans behind the Pratt. That shorter span is making me wonder if the 1888 trusses survived the flood but perhaps just needed a new approach span built on the one end. The writer in the article Melissa found was obviously quite peeved that CBC didn't win the contract... to the point where he didn't bother to tell who did! 😆
Tony,
That was my thinking too. The Whipple truss probably dates from 1888. With all the bridges wrecked in Butler County in 1913, it would not be surprising either if it took the county until 1916 to get around to rebuilding the Poasttown span. Should these pages be merged then or left separate?
Tony, point me in the direction I need to be.
The Dayton Herald: April 9 1888
Paul,
The 1916 date would certainly fit the Oregonia span(s), but not any Whipple that I've ever seen. There were only a "handful" of Whipple's built in the 1890's, as they were pretty much out of preference by the late 1880's as polygonal trusses became more popular. I'm betting that a portion of the Whipple truss structure succumbed in the 1913 flood and Oregonia was contracted to build replacements for the missing ones.
At first I just assumed this bridge was the predecessor to https://bridgehunter.com/oh/butler/poasttown/ but now that I look closer I'm wondering if the Whipple truss isn't the tall span seen behind the Oregonia truss in the 1940 photo on the original page. The Oregonia span is obviously newer than the Whipple one--perhaps it replaced an original span destroyed in 1913 and that's where the Middletown Historical Society got the 1916 date from?
Thoughts?
This page's URL is http://bridgehunter.com/oh/butler/bh94981/
Tony,
I'm good with that. Also for what it's worth, LostBridges.org mentions a covered bridge at Poasttown that survived until 1913: http://www.lostbridges.org/details.aspx?id=OH/35-09-10x&loc=.... That could be an error or maybe this was a situation where one covered span survived until 1913 while 2+ covered spans were replaced with Whipple trusses in 1888, similar to the Gregg Hill Bridge in Pike County. Then again, the two Whipple spans looked like they were plenty long enough to span the entire river by themselves, so your theory may be more correct and the LostBridges date may be all wrong.