| Key Facts |
| Bridge Name | Facility Carried / Feature Intersected | Location | Structure Type | Construction Date / Builder or Contractor |
| Niles Road Bridge | Niles Road (M-63) Over Yellow Creek | Rural: Berrien County, Michigan | Concrete T-Beam, Stationary | 1949 By: Unknown |
| Technical Facts |
| Structure Length | Roadway Width | Main Spans | Approach Spans |
| 32.8 Feet (10 Meters) | 40 Feet (12.2 Meters) | 1 | None |
This bridge functions much more like a culvert than a bridge. It features a width that is wider than the roadway, including shoulders, and it also features an extensive dirt fill on its surface. It is a bridge that from the day it was completed was not going to be a bridge that many people would see. Despite this fact, the bridge was still designed to look attractive, even if the only people who would ever see it were people who decided for whatever reason to walk off the road and down to the edge of this very small creek.
One of the things that is forever fascinating with historic bridges, even a relatively young bridge such as this 1949 bridge, is that engineers designed these bridges to look beautiful, even if few people would ever notice it. Here in the 21st Century, engineers is exactly the opposite. Even large bridges, even ones that might span the a large in an urban area, have little to no design to them, and are often quite plain and ugly. This loss of attention to detail in recent years is most unfortunate.
Located just south of this bridge is an old concrete abutment on a long-abandoned highway alignment. This was likely where the bridge that preceded the existing structure was.
