SAVING HISTORY
North Poes community rescues historic truss bridge
Claire Catlett, Rappahannock field representative of the Piedmont Environmental Council, stands on the 112-year-old Jordan River Bridge on North Poes Road. Catlett and her colleagues are helping the rural neighborhood protect the bridge as a historic resource. “e reason we think this is important is because there are a lot of resources along the Jordan River and within that community that we’d like to see identified in a historic district so we’re encouraging the community to pursue that.”
The Piedmont Environmental Council estimates there are fewer than 40 bridges le in the state of Virginia that are as old as the pony truss over the Jordan River on Rappahannock County’s North Poes Road. Now, the community is rallying to preserve it as a historic landmark.
In 2020, the Virginia Department of Transportation presented Rappahannock County o cials with plans to replace the existing truss “with a new prefabricated steel truss superstructure.” The transportation department cited an earlier study of the bridge which showed it had been built in 1935 and therefore wasn’t old enough to be treated as “historic.”
“VDOT in 2003 did a historical assessment and found that it was ineligible … to be designated as a historic bridge,” said Claire Catlett, Rappahannock eld representative to the Council.
“That was almost 20 years ago, but still VDOT proceeded to say that because of that determination, there’s no real initiative for them to preserve this bridge as-is. So we put Julie on it.”
In doing her research, Catlett’s colleague Julie Bolthouse (who was recently involved in the preservation of two other historic bridges, the 143-year-old Waterloo Bridge over the Rappahannock River in Amissville and the Remington Road Bridge in Culpeper County) discovered that the Jordan River Bridge was older than VDOT believed it to be.
Forged by the Cambria Steel Company (once the largest steel works in the country) in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the pony truss bridge was originally installed in Madison County in 1909. Then, in 1935, it was disassembled and moved to its present-day location on the Jordan River, where it has remained for more than eight decades.
“That’s the really neat part about these Cambria Steelwork bridges — the whole design of them is that they come apart in pieces and they can be refabricated by a local engineering crew. So the whole concept of this bridge being moved was kind of in its nature … and that’s ironic because VDOT said because it’s been moved that’s one of the reasons they’d say it’s ineligible as a historic bridge for their records,” Catlett said.
When community members pushed back against VDOT’s plans, arguing that it was a historic bridge and should be designated as such, VDOT listened. The department has since removed the Jordan River Bridge from its 2021 schedule.
Asked if the bridge’s structure is in urgent need of rehabilitation, Bolthouse said she didn’t think so. “VDOT inspects these bridges on a regular basis and they will close them if they deem them unsafe,” she said. “The bigger question is not how long will it be until the bridge becomes unsafe, it's how long will it be before a rehabilitation project is no longer feasible.”
To protect the bridge in perpetuity, the North Poes Road neighborhood is looking into applying to designate the area surrounding the Jordan River Bridge as a rural historic district. Bolthouse said that if the bridge is federally recognized as a “contributing resource” to a rural historic district, it will give the community the chance to shape future rehabilitation projects and maintain the rural character of the area.
“It’s really a cultural icon and a landmark of the community,” Catlett said of the bridge. “It speaks to the values that this community has for remembering its past, embracing conservation and the vibrant … rural values like agriculture and being able to ride a horse on a gravel road.”
Becky Burr, the North Poes Road community organizer leading the conservation e ort, could not be reached for comment before the publication of this story.