Ryot Covered Bridge

About

Ryot Covered Bridge crosses Dunning Creek in West St. Clair Township, Bedford County, just east of the village of Ryot and northwest of Fishertown. It is a Burr truss bridge about 84 feet long (83.5 feet per coveredbridges.net, 81 feet per dalejtravis.com). It is open to traffic.

History

The construction date is uncertain. Dalejtravis.com and coveredbridges.net date it to the 1880s, while the National Register list gives 1868 and coveredbridges.net notes claims of the late 1860s. No builder is recorded. The bridge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 10, 1980. It had been rehabilitated about seven years before 2002, when teenage arsonists set it on fire and badly damaged most of its wooden parts. The steel supports added in the earlier rehabilitation and the stone abutments survived. After the fire a request was made to remove it from the National Register. Bedford County funded the rebuild, which P. Joseph Lehman, Inc. completed, and the bridge reopened to traffic in 2004.

Design

Wikipedia describes a low to medium Burr truss with a shallow gable roof. In a Burr truss, a long timber arch on each side is combined with a multiple kingpost truss, and the arch ends bear on the abutments. Coveredbridges.net notes that original hardware such as bolts and bearing plates was galvanized and reused in the reconstruction.

Visiting

The bridge is on Bowser Road, about 0.5 mile east of PA 96 in Ryot, according to dalejtravis.com. It is open to vehicles.

Sources: Ryot Covered Bridge (Wikipedia), Ryot 38-05-17 (dalejtravis.com), Ryot Covered Bridge (coveredbridges.net)

Photo: Frank Kovalchek, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.