SANTA FE BRIDGE HAER No. MO-68 Spanning the South Fork of Salt River at County Road 24 u-artp Santa Fe Vicinity tintr^ Monroe County tOD Missouri ^ SfrFF . V ) '•::i PHOTOGRAPHS WRITTEN HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE DATA HISTORIC AMERICAN ENGINEERING RECORD Rocky Mountain Regional Office National Park Service U.S. Department of the.Interior P.O. Box 25287 Denver , Colorado 80225 fv?o Historic American Engineering Record I- HAER No. MO-68 Santa Fe Bridge Location: Spanning the South Fork of the Salt River on Monroe County Road 24, 0.3 mile south of Santa Fe; NW%, NE^, Section 20, Township 53 North, Range 8 West; South Fork Township, Monroe County, Missouri. USGS Quadrangle: Santa Fe, Missouri (7.5 Minute Series) Date of Construction: September - December 1888 (moved 1931-32) Designer: St. Louis Bridge and Iron Company, St. Louis MO Builder: St. Louis Bridge and Iron Company, St. Louis MO Fabricator: St. Louis Bridge and Iron Company, St. Louis MO Present Owner: Monroe County, Missouri Present Use: roadway bridge (scheduled for replacement in 1992) Significance: Designed, fabricated and erected by the St. Louis Bridge and Iron Company in 1888, the through truss on the Santa Fe Bridge orig- inally spanned the South Fork of the Salt River one mile south of the small town of Florida. The South Florida Bridge carried heavy vehicular traffic as a regionally important crossing until its replacement in the late 1920s. In 1931-32 one of its three spans was moved and re-erected at this site just south of Santa Fe, where it has since functioned in place with minimal alterations. This Pratt through truss displays typical wrought iron configura- tion and pin-connected detailing for its period of construction. It is technologically significant as the last remaining example in Monroe County from what was once a large collection of 19th century wrought iron spans. Report Assembled by: Clayton B. Fraser Fraserdesign Loveland Colorado November 1991 Santa Fe Bridge HAER No. MO-68 page2 The Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) documentation for the Santa Fe Bridge was conducted by Fraserdesign of Loveland, Colorado, under contract with Monroe County, Missouri The county has proposed the replace- ment of the structure (Project No. BRO-069(6)) in 1992, and this recordation is intended to mitigate in part the impact on the bridge by this action. Field recording of the Santa Fe Bridge and preparation of this report were undertaken in November 1991. The research for this project has involved three primary archival sources: the Monroe County Clerk's Office in Paris, Missouri, the Little Dixie Regional Library (Paris, Missouri, Branch) and the Missouri Highway and Transportation Department in Jefferson City, Missouri. M..onroe County was partitioned from Rails County in 1831. Later that year Paris, the county seat, was platted, as was Florida, the commercial center of Jefferson Township.1 As these and other settlements - Granville (1832), Jonesburg (1836), Clinton (1836), Santa Fe (1837) - developed along the Salt River, an4mpromptu network of roads and trails formed to link them, following the typical pattern of settle- ment and transportation.2 Organized road and bridge building was the responsibility of the county government, administered by a county court. To bridge the myriad of streams, runs, gullies, ravines and washes that crisscrossed the region, the court ordered short- span timber stringer structures built in the 1830s and 1840s, Though inexpensive to erect, most of these spans tended to be structurally suspect and required frequent main- tenance to prevent their collapse. Moreover, they were limited to short-span crossings. It was the Salt River, with its various forks and branches, that formed the most serious impediment to overland travel. Lacking sufficient revenues in its formative years, Monroe County waited until the 1850s to undertake any large-scale bridge construction on the Salt. The county court contracted with Payson, Illinois, contractor Joseph C. Elliott to erect a series of timber Burr arch-trusses with wood coverings, beginning with a 120- foot span over the North Fork of the Salt River at Stoutsville in 1856-57. Elliott also built bridges across the Middle Fork of the Salt at Paris (1857), across the Elk Fork on the Paris-Mexico Road (1858-59), and across the South Fork at Santa Fe (1859).3 In 1876 the county court contracted with Henry Sebastian and William Vliet of Kansas City to build four combination trusses over the Salt River.4 In 1879, Sebastian, who by this time had split with Vliet to form H.W. Sebastian and Company in St. Louis, erected two combination spans across the Long Branch of the Salt.5 Sebastian designed and built all of Monroe County's major spans in the 1870s and 1880s. He even acted as de facto bridge commissioner as he inspected and reported on the condition of county bridges. Santa Fe Bridge m HAERHAER1 No. MO-68 Ipage3i?5' Before 1882 the county had built only timber or combination structures. That August, however, the court contracted for its first all-iron span when it ordered a 100-foot Pratt truss from Sebastian to cross the Middle Fork of the Salt River south of Holliday.6 Just after this span was completed in April 1883, the judges bought a second iron truss for a crossing of the North Fork a mile north of Florida. Erected by Sebastian later that year, the bridge at Hickman's Mill consisted of a single 152-foot Whipple truss.7 By 1884 the county had built 32 bridges of various sizesj for an aggregate cost of over $51,000. Of these, only the North Florida and Holliday bridges were comprised entirely of iron. The rest were timber structures, either simple stringer spans or combination trusses that used iron fittings and/or tension members.8 With an overall length of some 400 feet, the bridge over the South Fork just south of Florida was one of the most important and by far the longest crossing in Monroe County. Located next to the Goss and Vandeventer Mill, the structure consisted of three "National" combination trusses, built in the 1850s for approximately $5,000. The spans lacked a wood sheathing to cover their structural members and had by this time begun to decay perilously. In October 1884 the county court ordered road and bridge commissioner William H. Combs to visit the deteriorating structure to "exam- ine the condition of the bridge... and condemn and close the same if he deems it unsafe for public use and travel."9 Combs reported back to the court a month later; evidently the bridge was kept in service with relatively minor structural repairs.10 The South Florida Bridge earned wagon traffic for another three years until February 1888, when a sizeable contingent of area residents petitioned the county court for a new iron span at this location. "They labor under great inconvenience for want of same," wrote the county clerk. In response, the judges directed Combs to visit the site and estimate the cost of an all-iron bridge.11 It was not until summer that the court acted further toward construction of the bridge at Florida. That August, H.W. Sebastian, who had recently incorporated his firm as the St. Louis Bridge and Iron Company, presented plans and specifications for a new bridge at the site.12 Sebastian had delineated a wrought iron structure made up of two 134- foot and one 136-foot Pratt through trusses, supported by stone masonry piers and abutments.13 Extending 404 feet between the abutments, the proposed structure was only slightly longer than the timber bridge it would replace, but its iron composition would make it far more durable. The trusses featured standard, pin-connected configuration and detailing, straight from St. Louis B&Ts current roster of designs.14 (See Appendix for the full text of the specifica- tions.) With a nominal height of 22 feet and roadway width of 14 feet, the trusses were divided into seven equal panels. They were comprised of rolled wrought iron members, built up and machine-riveted in the St. Louis B&I shops. The inclined endposts and upper I Santa Fe Bridge | HAER No. MO-68 m page 4 chords consisted of two back-to-back channels, covered by a continuous iron plate on top and joined by batten plates beneath. The verticals were similarly configured, with two channels laced together by iron straps. (Two square eyebars with shovel ends form the verticals at the hips.) The lower chords and diagonals were each made up of two rec- tangular bars with punched eyes; the counters consisted of round eyerods with slotted tumbuckles. St. Louis Bridge and Iron typically used rolled I-beams for floor beams on its 12-foot-wide trusses; on its heavily trafficked 14-foot-wide spans - such as the South Florida Bridge - the firm employed tapered, "fishtail" plate girders, U-bolted to the pins below the lower chords. The struts were comprised of four angles joined by double lacing, with deeper, knee-braced lattice struts at the portals. The upper lateral braces were round bars with threaded ends; the lower, round eyebars with unslotted tumbuck- les. Timber stringers supported a timber deck, and 2x10 boards formed the hub rails. The judges listened as Sebastian explained his design, and then they immediately awarded a contract to fabricate and erect the trusses for $7,000.00, apparently without competi- tive bidding. (See Figure 1 for a copy of the contract.) Almost as an afterthought, they awarded the substructural contract to Sebastian a month later for $825.14 A St. Louis B&I crew began excavating for the limestone abutments and piers soon after the award of this second contract, completing the masonry work late in the fall.