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Buckingham Road Bridge

Buckingham Road Bridge

Primary Photographer(s): Rick McOmber

Bridge Documented: April 18, 2009

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Facility Carried / Feature Intersected
Buckingham Road (TR-181) Over Marsh Run
Location
Rural: Huron County, Ohio: United States
Construction Date and Builder / Engineer
1922 By Builder/Contractor: Unknown
Rehabilitation Date
1991
Main Span Length
54.0 Feet (16.5 Meters)
Structure Length
60.0 Feet (18.3 Meters)
Roadway Width
17 Feet (5.18 Meters)
Spans
1 Main Span(s)
Inventory Number
3946479

Historic Significance Rating (HSR)
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Bridge Documentation

View Archived National Bridge Inventory Report - Has Additional Details and Evaluation

This bridge is a traditional riveted Warren pony truss with fair historic integrity. A vertical member has been replaced with a welded replacement. Modern Armco guardrails were bolted onto the bridge  sometime between 2007 and 2009, although original lattice railings remain behind the Armco guardrail. The Armco guardrail is improperly mounted on the bridge. A frequent problem encountered with historic bridges is lazy government agency bridge owners who bolt Armco guardrail directly to the fracture critical members of a truss bridge. When a vehicle collides with a bridge with guardrails mounted in this way, the impact damage is transferred directly to the truss members, which may result in member damage or member failure which leads to bridge closure, or in a worst case scenario bridge collapse. The needs of public safety and historic bridge preservation are equally being short-changed by this improper guardrail mounting.

There are one of two scenarios at this bridge. Either traffic volumes and speeds are low, and there is little risk of a vehicle colliding with the bridge, in which case the Armco guardrails are not needed as all and are simply ruining the aesthetic qualities of the bridge. The other scenario is that indeed, Armco guardrails or other form of crash-tested barriers are needed, and if so then they should be mounted correctly to protect the bridge as well as vehicles. Correct mounting of Armco or other forms of crash-tested barriers is to attach them to railing posts that are devoted to just holding the guardrail and are not directly attached to the truss web.

Information and Findings From Ohio's Historic Bridge Inventory

Setting/Context

The bridge carries a 2 lane road over a stream in a rural area of active farms.

Physical Description

The 1-span, 59'-long, rivet-connected Warren pony truss bridge is traditionally composed of built-up members. It has stock lattice railings.

Summary of Significance

The 1922 Warren pony truss has no distinguishing features. It has riveted connections, typical of Warren trusses from about 1900 to the 1940s when riveted connections began to be phased out in favor of welded connections. The weld-connected Warren trusses continue to be a popular bridge type/design on county roads in Ohio. The survey has identified more than 500 pre-1961 Warren pony truss bridges, making them the most common truss type/design surviving in the state. This example is not historically significant for its technology or context. More distinguished examples better represent the significance of the type/design in the development of the state's road systems. The not eligible recommendation of the prior inventory remains appropriate.

Warren trusses are the most common design found in Ohio and the nation. The Ohio Phase 1A survey (2008) has identified more than 500 examples dating from 1897 to 1961, accounting for well over half of the approximately 800 pre-1961 metal trusses. The Warren design was particularly well suited to rigid (riveted, and later welded connections), but not as well suited to pin connections; this helps to explain its popularity in the 20th century rather than the 19th century, although it is based on a British patent issued to engineers James Warren and Willoughby Monzani in 1848. In the U.S., the popularity of the Warren truss coincided with improvements in pneumatic field riveting equipment starting about 1900. The Warren, which is based on a series of equilateral triangles, is identified by its simplicity of design, ease of construction with equal-sized members, and ability of some diagonals to act in both tensions and compression. Warren trusses are often stiffened by the addition of verticals; they can also have polygonal (sloped) upper chords to achieve greatest depth at midspan.

Warren trusses were a standard design of the Ohio State Highway Department in the 1910s and 1920s, but they achieved their greatest popularity with county engineers, who purchased the bridges from Ohio fabricators such as the Champion Bridge Co. and the Mt. Vernon Bridge Co. Fewer than 25 surviving rivet-connected Warren trusses date prior to 1915, and they represent the period when the rivet-connected design solidified its position as the most popular prefabricated county truss design.

A noteworthy change in the technological development of Warren trusses was the transition from riveted to welded connections that began in the mid to late 1930s. The development was based on improvements in arc-welding equipment and the propagation of welding techniques as a substitute for riveting in many fields of construction, such as steel-hull ships and steel-frame buildings. While most of Ohio's remaining truss fabricators went out of business in the depression of the 1930s, Ohio Bridge Corporation (OBC) of Cambridge grew its business on the development of a standard weld-connected Warren pony truss with polygonal upper chords in the years immediately following WWII. OBC remains in operation and many Ohio counties continue to find the weld-connected Warren trusses to be a desirable economical alternative to other bridge types. More than 360 of the 500 Warren trusses in the study are weld-connected and most are attributable to OBC from the late 1940s to 1960. It is the early examples of weld-connected Warren trusses dating from the mid 1930s to mid 1940s that are the technologically significant examples.

Bridge Considered Historic By Survey: No

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Maps and Links: Buckingham Road Bridge

Coordinates (Latitude, Longitude):

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Bridgehunter.com: View listed bridges within 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometers) of this bridge.

Bridgehunter.com: View listed bridges within 10 miles (16 kilometers) of this bridge.

HistoricBridges.org Bridge Browser: View listed bridges within 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometers) of this bridge.

HistoricBridges.org Bridge Browser: View listed bridges within 10 miles (16 kilometers) of this bridge.

2021 National Bridge Inventory: View listed bridges within 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometers) of this bridge.

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