Martin Road Bridge
Mount Vernon Bridge Company
Mount Vernon, Ohio

In 1880, a flood washed away a wooden bridge in Caledonia Township, Shiawassee County, Michigan. By 1885, a new iron bridge was built at a cost of $1,800. It was built by the Mount Vernon Bridge Co. of Mount Vernon, Ohio and is one of only a few surviving in the U.S. It is 119 feet long and 15 feet wide, having a wooden floor and stone abutments.

The bridge is a single-span, pin-connected, Pratt through truss structure, displaying nine panels. The three-by-eight-inch wooden planks forming the deck are supported by six rows of six-inch I-beams and two rows of six-inch channels carried on sixteen-inch built-up metal floor beams. Rubble fieldstone abutments support the bridge. The structure is currently closed to highway traffic.

The Martin Road Bridge is one of the oldest metal through truss highway bridges in Michigan. The state's oldest surviving examples date from 1876 and fewer than a dozen such structures built prior to 1890 remain in the entire state.

The bridge is an excellent and a rare example of late nineteenth-century bridge building. It was listed on the National Register in 1991 and the State Register of Historic Sites in 1990.

From the Shiawassee County History       http://www.angelfire.com/mi2/shiawassee/