PennDOT to restore Brownsville’s historic cast iron bridge
Dunlap’s Creek Bridge as it appears today partially obscured by a steel beam that once supported a building in Brownsville.
A detail view showing a cast iron arch and steel modifications to Dunlap’s Creek Bridge in Brownsville.
Dunlap's Creek Bridge as it appeared in the late 1800s.
BROWNSVILLE – The state will invest $1 million in engineering costs alone to restore the nation’s first cast iron bridge dating to 1836, a Brownsville structure that is considered to be the most important span in Pennsylvania.
The state Department of Transportation will spend two years overcoming the consulting and environmental hurdles before construction can begin on Dunlap’s Creek Bridge, which was once part of the heavily traveled National Road, said Gary Ferrari, the project manager.
“I don’t think there’s any chance that we’d ever get rid of this thing,” Ferrari said Monday, discussing the bridge’s historical significance.
The 80-foot-long span is a national landmark, having been recognized as a breakthrough in technology by American Society of Materials International, a distinction the group also bestowed on the Statue of Liberty and Eiffel Tower. To this day, it’s considered among engineers to be an obscure symbol to American endeavor.
Steam engine builder John Snowden, whose foundry once stood a short distance from the bridge, was given the contract for its construction by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at a time when the National Road was heavily traveled during the nation’s Western movement.
At age 40 then, his Vulcan Iron and Machine Works was one of the most successful iron manufacturing plants in the region, an engineer, Martin P. Burke Jr., wrote in a 1989 report he presented at the 68th annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board.
“It looked as if the whole Earth was on the road; wagons, stages, horses, cattle, hogs, sheep and turkeys being there without number,” Burke stated in the report.
The project would become a monumental undertaking, as some of the 250 iron castings needed to form the span weighed 2 1/2 tons.
“Everything seems to have gone wrong since the commencement of this work and I do hope that I may never have such another job in my life,” construction supervisor George Cass summarized in an 1837 report on the project.
The immense sizes of some of the pieces created problems with stability and dimensional control, according to Burke’s report.
The span along what also is known as Market Street was officially dedicated July 4, 1839, after it was given a coat of “gas tar” and three coats of white lead paint. Five years later, historian Sherman Day wrote it was “probably the most splendid piece of bridge architecture in the United States,” Burke’s report stated.
Cass went on to organize the first steamboat line on the Monongahela River. Meanwhile, Snowden expanded his plant to build steamboats for the Union Navy during the Civil War.
Local interest in the bridge renewed in 2012 after Fayette County acquired much of the property in the borough’s downtown and began to demolish blight, revealing for the first time parts of the span that had been hidden from view.
The most recent PennDOT inspection revealed the bridge is in good enough condition that it doesn’t need any vehicle weight-limit restrictions, Ferrari said.
Some of the discussions before construction begins will involve removing the bridge’s sidewalks and adjacent concrete piers that once supported buildings to return the bridge to its original appearance, he said.