Buttonwood Covered Bridge

About

Buttonwood Covered Bridge carries Township Road 816 over Blockhouse Creek in Jackson Township, Lycoming County, near the village of Buttonwood that gives it its name. It can be seen from the northbound lanes of US 15. Built in 1898, it is about 74 ft long and open to vehicles. It is maintained by Lycoming County and is the shortest and most heavily used of the county's three remaining covered bridges.

History

The National Register form and the Evans and Zacher guides date the bridge to 1898; a 1966 article by Milton Landis gives 1878. The builder is not recorded in the sources reviewed. The bridge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 24, 1980, as part of the Covered Bridges of Bradford, Sullivan and Lycoming Counties nomination. It received a major restoration in 1998, which a 2010 county summary put at about $147,000.

Design

Wikipedia describes the truss as a queen post truss with king post elements, following Landis and Evans, and notes that the National Register forms wrongly call it a Burr arch. Recorded lengths range from 57 ft to 77 ft 6 in; the National Bridge Inventory gives 74 ft 2 in and the National Register 63 ft 6 in. The deck is about 14 ft 5 in wide, and the posted load limit is 3 tons.

Visiting

The bridge is on Township Road 816 beside US 15. Vehicles can cross it. Uncovering PA notes that pull-off space at the bridge is limited.

Sources: Buttonwood Covered Bridge (Wikipedia), Lycoming County covered bridges to be preserved (VCBS), Visiting the covered bridges of Lycoming County (Uncovering PA)

Photo: Ruhrfisch, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.