America's Covered Bridges. Ronald G. Knapp

      The “camelback” segment in the west totaled 1,260 feet in six spans, somewhat shorter than today’s “World’s Longest Covered Bridge” at Hartland, New Brunswick. (Terry E. Miller Collection)

      Shortly after completing the bridge, Burr wrote a letter on February 26, 1815, to his friend, fellow bridge builder Reuben Field of Waterford, New York, detailing how the bridge was built. This is probably the most detailed historical description of bridge building known and helps us appreciate just how overwhelming this task was (Burr, 1815). In the letter, Burr exclaims: “This arch is, without doubt, the greatest in the world. . . . The altitude or rise of the arch is thirty-one feet. The arch is double and the two segments are combined by kingposts seven feet in length between the shoulders, and are united to the arch by lock-work. Between the kingposts are truss braces and counteracting braces. The arch stands firm and remarkably easy, without the least struggling in any part of the work.” As detailed as this account is, it leaves many questions unanswered. If the bridge is 32 feet wide, as Burr writes, then it suggests two lanes. Burr writes of the raising of only one arch. Before proposing a solution, readers need to know that Burr’s triumph was short-lived. On March 3, 1818, while Burr was still working on the Susquehanna bridge at Rock Run, Maryland, the natural forces of water and ice ripped the McCall’s Ferry Bridge from its foundations and smashed it against the rocks along the river. Even to this day, there is no crossing at McCall’s Ferry. But there is a clue. Burr’s otherwise little known and short-lived bridge over the Mohawk at Canajoharie, New York, built in 1806, was described as a single arch of 330 feet. In June, 1808, Anne M. H. Hyde de Neuville painted “Incomplete Bridge, Palatine” of the remains of one end of the bridge. It shows two trusses, each with the arch as the lower chord and reinforced with a framework of posts and cross bracing. Assuming that the McCall’s Ferry Bridge was similar, we can surmise that Burr had the entire framework built on the floating falsework, cut the bracing between the trusses, and moved each separately over the ice onto the stonework. Burr was unchallenged on his genius and daring.

      6. Burr’s final bridge over the Susquehanna was between Rock Run and Port Deposit, villages halfway between Conowingo and today’s I95 in Maryland and whose former tollhouse is in what is now Susquehanna State Park. The bridge, consisting of eighteen spans, each 200 feet, with eight from the western shore to the first island, two to the second island, and eight from that to the eastern shore for a total length of 4,170 feet, was completed in 1818. Beginning in 1823, it suffered a series of calamities. First, on January 1, the eastern half was set on fire from a spark generated when a sleigh rail scraped a nail head. Lewis Wernwag, Burr’s greatest contemporary (though Burr had already died the year before), rebuilt the damaged spans. Another fire in 1828, now on the western side, required the rebuilding of six spans, again by Wernwag, which he completed by September, 1831. The bridge’s final disabling came on October 27, 1854, when a herd of cattle coming from Port Deposit collapsed or damaged four spans. At this point, officials decided to abandon the bridge. On February 11, 1857, an ice floe administered the coup de grace, bringing down much of what remained.

      The last four years of Burr’s life were ones of misery and stress. There are unconfirmed reports that he may have built some modest bridges and might have been in the middle of a project in Pennsylvania when he died. Though he was a bold, innovative, and ambitious bridge builder, he was far less skilled in managing money, for coordinating the construction of and payments for multiple bridges simultaneously necessitated a small army of accountants. Just as ice so often bunched up and destroyed covered bridges, mounting debts and competing demands for cash flow brought Burr’s otherwise glorious life to an early end. All that is known is that Burr died in Middletown, Pennsylvania, in November 1822. Nothing is known of the cause of death or the whereabouts of his burial. Of all of America’s many bridge builders, Theodore Burr stood out as the unrivaled leader, but, like his mighty McCall’s Ferry Bridge, his fame was short-lived and he left the scene suddenly. Most builders after Burr were less visionary and more reasonable, though one more daring bridge builder requires inclusion.