Waterford Covered Bridge

About

The Waterford Covered Bridge, also called the Old Kissing Bridge and the Brotherton Bridge, carries Niemeyer Road (Township Road 463) over LeBoeuf Creek southeast of the borough of Waterford in Waterford Township, Erie County. It is a Town lattice truss bridge built in 1875, 85 ft 11 in long with a 78 ft span. It is open to vehicle traffic.

History

Brothers Charles and James Phelps built the bridge in 1875. An eyewitness recalled in 1936 that the work took about two months, and a sign over each portal read "Old Kissing Bridge built in 1875 by the Phelps Bros." until it was removed in the mid 2000s. The Historic American Buildings Survey recorded the bridge in 1936, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 17, 1980. Oversized trucks damaged it in 2003 and 2005. PennDOT closed the bridge in 2011. A year-long, $3.4 million rehabilitation reused as much of the original truss as possible, and the bridge reopened to traffic on November 14, 2024.

Design

The Town lattice truss, patented by Ithiel Town in 1820, uses a web of crossing planks fastened with wooden pins. The road deck is 13 ft 5 in wide, with lengthwise runners laid over transverse planks. Waterford is painted barn red and is the only painted covered bridge in Erie County. It is one of two covered bridges left in the county, with the Harrington Covered Bridge, after the Carman (1996) and Gudgeonville (2008) bridges were lost to arson.

Visiting

The bridge is on Niemeyer Road just southeast of Waterford and carries cars as well as pedestrians.

Sources: Waterford Covered Bridge (Wikipedia), Historic Erie County covered bridge reopens after restoration work (YourErie)

Photo: Doug Kerr from Albany, NY, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.