Pony truss bridge on the Dixie Highway
Canon PowerShot S95
2012
One of the pleasures of exploring old highway alignments is that you’ll sometimes find old bridges still serving. You’ll find this one carrying State Street over Coal Creek on the south side of Veedersburg, Indiana.
This road was part of the 1914 Dixie Highway, a network of roads that connected Chicago and Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, to Miami, Florida. When the state built its first network of state highways in the late 1910s, it routed State Road 33 from the Illinois state line to Indianapolis over this segment of the Dixie Highway.
In 1926, as part of a renumbering of all state roads, State Road 33 became State Road 34. Probably in that same year it was rerouted about a half mile to the north to run through downtown Veedersburg. Then in 1952, State Road 34 was renamed again, to US 136.
This bridge was never part of the Dixie Highway or State Road 33 or 34. Rather, this bridge was placed here in 1963, replacing an older bridge. This bridge had served on some other state highway. It sometimes happened that the state would improve a highway and replace otherwise good bridges, usually because the road was being widened. This bridge was still in good enough shape to keep serving, so Fountain County officials obtained it and had it installed here.
If you’d like to get more of my photography in your inbox or reader, click here to subscribe.
