This next Mystery Bridge takes us to Newport, Ohio and this rather unusual bridge. This bridge was located across the Miami and Erie Canal at the site where Main Street and Ohio State Highway 66 is located. It is located near another crossing over the Great Miami River. The Miami-Erie Canal was constructed between 1825 and 1845 and used to connect Cincinnati with Toledo, thus providing a short cut from the Ohio River to Lake Erie. The 274-mile canal was in service until the Great Miami Flood in 1913 which devastated the canal and its locks and crossings. Because of the exorbitant costs to repair and rebuild the canal, combined with the development of the railroad system, the canal was abandoned. Only small sections are in use but the rest the canal has been filled in.
And this takes us to this unusual bridge. The bridge is a combination of vertical lift and through truss span. The portal bracings are gable-shaped with V-laced bracings. The endposts also follow the V-lacing. The truss type is unknown but the side view indicates that the outer top and lower chords are Town Lattice, with the truss lift span and horizontal upper chords being Warren. The span was between 70 and 100 feet. Some more pictures of the bridge can be found in another blog article here. The bridge was removed after the canal was abandoned and one can see the filled-in canal when driving past it entering Newport.
And this leads us to the question of the bridge’s history; namely when it was built and by whom and how long was it in service. More importantly is determining how the bridge was lifted and finally, when it was taken down. As a bonus, a through truss bridge spanning the Great Miami River existed about 300 feet away from the lift span, the same location as the current concrete structure.
Any ideas about the bridge? Feel free to comment or send some information to the Chronicles. It will be updated here as well as in the bridgehunter.com page, where a data page on it can be found here.
Happy Bridgehunting and happy trails until we meet again. 🙂
The Bridgehunter's Chronicles 