Messerall Road Bridge

"East Titusville Bridge"

Most Recent Visit To Bridge: July 1, 2006

Visit HABS HAER's Page For This Historic Bridge

This bridge joins the Williams Road Bridge and the Mead Avenue Bridge as the three most significant bridges in truss-rich Mercer County. The Messerall Road Bridge is along with the Beatty Mills Bridge, the only two remaining bowstring truss bridges that I am aware of in western Pennsylvania. The bowstring truss bridge, sometimes called a type of arch bridge, is the oldest and rarest type of metal truss bridge, built mostly in the 1870s. Unlike the truss bridge designs that came to dominate the truss bridge era later on, these bridges stand on their own as a whole category of truss bridge. They really don't have a lot in common with the appearance of a truss bridge or an arch bridge, although in terms of engineering, they combine the physics of each. Despite this level of rarity that makes this bridge more significant than any wooden covered bridge, the Messerall Road Bridge sits abandoned, with its deck removed, just waiting for an abutment to fail or a bad spring food to send this priceless bridge crashing into the creek.

This bridge is an excellent, and large example of the Wrought Iron Bridge Company version of the bowstring truss bridge. The bridge features a Keystone column top chord, which itself retains good historic integrity, and represents the Keystone technology very well. Be sure to visit the HABS HAER website for this bridge, as they have a decent history of the bridge and surrounding area in the data pages for the bridge.

The historic bridge inventory actually had the date for this bridge at 1870, which is impossible, since 1870 was before the patent date of 1873. HABS HAER provided the correct date of 1876. I corrected the date in my inventory discussion table below.