Gudgeonville Covered Bridge
Encyclopedia
The Gudgeonville Covered Bridge was a 84 feet (25.6 m) long Multiple King-post Truss
covered bridge
over Elk Creek
in Girard Township
, Erie County
in the U.S. state
of Pennsylvania
. It was built in 1868 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
on September 17, 1980. It was destroyed by arson
on November 8, 2008.
It was the oldest of the three remaining covered bridges in Erie County. The bridge structure's sufficiency rating on the Federal Highway Administration
National Bridge Inventory
was only 14.6 percent and its condition was deemed "basically intolerable requiring high priority of corrective action".
factory, or, a more popular explanation, that the mule that supposedly died on the bridge was named "Gudgeon."
over the years. There were several proposals to dismantle the bridge and move it to a more secure location where it would not be vandalized. Another proposal was to build another bridge to bypass the original bridge, as it is too narrow to allow a variety of vehicles to cross it, including snowplow
s, fire trucks, and ambulance
s.
Evans' 2001 Pennsylvania's covered bridges: a complete guide described the bridge to be "structurally sound," but its general appearance to be "most disappointing". The Federal Highway Administration
National Bridge Inventory
found the sufficiency rating of the bridge structure to be only 14.6 percent. It found that the bridge's foundations were determined to "scour critical," meaning that the bridge's foundations were "determined to be unstable for the calculated scour conditions," and that the railing "does not meet currently acceptable standards". Its overall condition was deemed "basically intolerable requiring high priority of corrective action", with an estimated cost to improve the bridge of $
107,000.
(6:40 UTC
) on November 8, 2008. The blaze was determined by the Pennsylvania State Police
to have been an arson
. On December 17, the State Police arrested two suspects after they confessed to dousing the bridge in gasoline and setting it on fire. The suspects were also involved in several other incidents in northern Crawford County
and western Erie County. In August 2009, one of the arsonists was convicted and sentenced to 5 to 10 years in prison for the destruction of the bridge and for an unrelated charge. The other arsonist was sentenced to 5½ to 14 years for the fire and for a string of other crimes.
The remains of the bridge were lifted from its abutment
s and set in a nearby field and dismantled to allow for a temporary bridge to have been built in its place on January 26. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation
(PennDOT) would not allow an exact replica of the covered bridge as it still would not be up to code. The temporary, prefabricated
bridge was erected in August 2009, funded by an insurance policy held by the township. The new bridge was needed quickly as a permanent, concrete bridge would have taken three years to design and build. Without a bridge, traffic would have had to make a 2 miles (3.2 km) detour.
that surrounds the bridge. Locals believed that the bridge was haunted. A sheer cliff made of shale
, nicknamed the "Ox's Bow," flanked the bridge. Many people erroneously believe this cliff to be called the Devil's Backbone, but that is actually a two sided cliff some miles away. Unexplained screams in the middle of the night from the surrounding woods was said to be the result of children who have fallen from the cliff to their deaths.
Another unexplained phenomenon was the sound of hooves on wood and occasional braying coming from the bridge. One story is that a mule
was beaten to death on the bridge by its drunken owner because it refused to cross the bridge. Another story involves the mule having a heart attack from being spooked by a calliope
playing on a barge
going down on the nearby canal.
The following table is a comparison of published measurements of length, width and load recorded in different sources using different methods, as well as the name or names cited. NBI measures bridge length between the "backwalls of abutments" or pavement grooves and the roadway width as "the most restrictive minimum distance between curbs or rails". The NRHP form was prepared by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
(PHMC), which surveyed county engineers, historical and covered bridge societies, and others for all the covered bridges in the commonwealth. The Evans visited every covered bridge in Pennsylvania in 2001 and measured each bridge's length (portal to portal) and width (at the portal) for their book. The data in Zacher's book was based on a 1991 survey of all covered bridges in Pennsylvania by the PHMC and PennDOT, aided by local government and private agencies. The article uses primarily the NBI and NRHP data, as they are national programs.
* Listed mainspan length only
Truss
In architecture and structural engineering, a truss is a structure comprising one or more triangular units constructed with straight members whose ends are connected at joints referred to as nodes. External forces and reactions to those forces are considered to act only at the nodes and result in...
covered bridge
Covered bridge
A covered bridge is a bridge with enclosed sides and a roof, often accommodating only a single lane of traffic. Most covered bridges are wooden; some newer ones are concrete or metal with glass sides...
over Elk Creek
Elk Creek (Lake Erie)
Elk Creek is a tributary of Lake Erie in Erie County, Pennsylvania in the United States. The creek is part of the Lake Erie Watershed and has a drainage basin of . Elk Creek is stocked with brown trout and steelhead by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.- Course :Elk Creek has its origins...
in Girard Township
Girard Township, Erie County, Pennsylvania
Girard Township is a township in Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 5,133 at the 2000 census.-Geography:According to the United States Census Bureau, the township has a total area of , of which, of it is land and of it is water.-Demographics:As of the census of 2000,...
, Erie County
Erie County, Pennsylvania
Erie County is a county located in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. As of 2010, the population was 280,566. Its county seat is the City of Erie.- Geography :...
in the U.S. state
U.S. state
A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...
of Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
. It was built in 1868 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
on September 17, 1980. It was destroyed by arson
Arson
Arson is the crime of intentionally or maliciously setting fire to structures or wildland areas. It may be distinguished from other causes such as spontaneous combustion and natural wildfires...
on November 8, 2008.
It was the oldest of the three remaining covered bridges in Erie County. The bridge structure's sufficiency rating on the Federal Highway Administration
Federal Highway Administration
The Federal Highway Administration is a division of the United States Department of Transportation that specializes in highway transportation. The agency's major activities are grouped into two "programs," the Federal-aid Highway Program and the Federal Lands Highway Program...
National Bridge Inventory
National Bridge Inventory
The National Bridge Inventory is a database, compiled by the Federal Highway Administration, with information on all bridges and tunnels in the United States that have roads passing above or below. This is similar to the grade crossing identifier number database compiled by the Federal Railroad...
was only 14.6 percent and its condition was deemed "basically intolerable requiring high priority of corrective action".
Construction
The Gudgeonville Bridge was constructed around 1868 and was rebuilt in the early 1870s after a fire. The bridge is located in Girard Township and crosses Elk Creek. The bridge was built and designed by William Sherman. The foundation of the bridge is believed to be remnants of the Erie Extension Canal. The name of the bridge has always had some mystery about. Some souces indicate that the bridge was constructed to provide access to a gudgeonGudgeon
A gudgeon is a circular fitting, often made of metal, which is affixed to a surface. It allows for the pivoting of another fixture. It is generally used with a pintle, which is a pin which pivots in the hole in the gudgeon. As such, a gudgeon is a simple bearing.-Winged gudgeons:A winged gudgeon...
factory, or, a more popular explanation, that the mule that supposedly died on the bridge was named "Gudgeon."
Modern use and status
The bridge has been damaged from numerous small fires and has been the site of constant vandalismVandalism
Vandalism is the behaviour attributed originally to the Vandals, by the Romans, in respect of culture: ruthless destruction or spoiling of anything beautiful or venerable...
over the years. There were several proposals to dismantle the bridge and move it to a more secure location where it would not be vandalized. Another proposal was to build another bridge to bypass the original bridge, as it is too narrow to allow a variety of vehicles to cross it, including snowplow
Snowplow
A snowplow is a device intended for mounting on a vehicle, used for removing snow and ice from outdoor surfaces, typically those serving transportation purposes...
s, fire trucks, and ambulance
Ambulance
An ambulance is a vehicle for transportation of sick or injured people to, from or between places of treatment for an illness or injury, and in some instances will also provide out of hospital medical care to the patient...
s.
Federal Highway Administration
The Federal Highway Administration is a division of the United States Department of Transportation that specializes in highway transportation. The agency's major activities are grouped into two "programs," the Federal-aid Highway Program and the Federal Lands Highway Program...
National Bridge Inventory
National Bridge Inventory
The National Bridge Inventory is a database, compiled by the Federal Highway Administration, with information on all bridges and tunnels in the United States that have roads passing above or below. This is similar to the grade crossing identifier number database compiled by the Federal Railroad...
found the sufficiency rating of the bridge structure to be only 14.6 percent. It found that the bridge's foundations were determined to "scour critical," meaning that the bridge's foundations were "determined to be unstable for the calculated scour conditions," and that the railing "does not meet currently acceptable standards". Its overall condition was deemed "basically intolerable requiring high priority of corrective action", with an estimated cost to improve the bridge of $
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
107,000.
Destruction
The Gudgeonville Covered Bridge caught fire around 1:40 EDTEastern Time Zone
The Eastern Time Zone of the United States and Canada is a time zone that falls mostly along the east coast of North America. Its UTC time offset is −5 hrs during standard time and −4 hrs during daylight saving time...
(6:40 UTC
Coordinated Universal Time
Coordinated Universal Time is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is one of several closely related successors to Greenwich Mean Time. Computer servers, online services and other entities that rely on having a universally accepted time use UTC for that purpose...
) on November 8, 2008. The blaze was determined by the Pennsylvania State Police
Pennsylvania State Police
The Pennsylvania State Police is the state police force of Pennsylvania, responsible for statewide law enforcement. It was founded in 1905 by order of Governor Samuel Pennypacker, in response to the private police forces used by mine and mill owners to stop worker strikes and the inability or...
to have been an arson
Arson
Arson is the crime of intentionally or maliciously setting fire to structures or wildland areas. It may be distinguished from other causes such as spontaneous combustion and natural wildfires...
. On December 17, the State Police arrested two suspects after they confessed to dousing the bridge in gasoline and setting it on fire. The suspects were also involved in several other incidents in northern Crawford County
Crawford County, Pennsylvania
Crawford County is a county located in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. As of 2010, the population was 88,765.Crawford County was created on March 12, 1800, from part of Allegheny County and named for Colonel William Crawford...
and western Erie County. In August 2009, one of the arsonists was convicted and sentenced to 5 to 10 years in prison for the destruction of the bridge and for an unrelated charge. The other arsonist was sentenced to 5½ to 14 years for the fire and for a string of other crimes.
Abutment
An abutment is, generally, the point where two structures or objects meet. This word comes from the verb abut, which means adjoin or having common boundary. An abutment is an engineering term that describes a structure located at the ends of a bridge, where the bridge slab adjoins the approaching...
s and set in a nearby field and dismantled to allow for a temporary bridge to have been built in its place on January 26. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation oversees transportation issues in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The administrator of PennDOT is the Pennsylvania Secretary of Transportation, currently Barry Schoch Presently, PennDOT supports over of state roads and highways, about 25,000...
(PennDOT) would not allow an exact replica of the covered bridge as it still would not be up to code. The temporary, prefabricated
Prefabrication
Prefabrication is the practice of assembling components of a structure in a factory or other manufacturing site, and transporting complete assemblies or sub-assemblies to the construction site where the structure is to be located...
bridge was erected in August 2009, funded by an insurance policy held by the township. The new bridge was needed quickly as a permanent, concrete bridge would have taken three years to design and build. Without a bridge, traffic would have had to make a 2 miles (3.2 km) detour.
Superstition
The Gudgeonville Covered Bridge had always been a popular place to visit because of superstitionSuperstition
Superstition is a belief in supernatural causality: that one event leads to the cause of another without any process in the physical world linking the two events....
that surrounds the bridge. Locals believed that the bridge was haunted. A sheer cliff made of shale
Shale
Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock composed of mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals and tiny fragments of other minerals, especially quartz and calcite. The ratio of clay to other minerals is variable. Shale is characterized by breaks along thin laminae or parallel layering...
, nicknamed the "Ox's Bow," flanked the bridge. Many people erroneously believe this cliff to be called the Devil's Backbone, but that is actually a two sided cliff some miles away. Unexplained screams in the middle of the night from the surrounding woods was said to be the result of children who have fallen from the cliff to their deaths.
Another unexplained phenomenon was the sound of hooves on wood and occasional braying coming from the bridge. One story is that a mule
Mule
A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. Horses and donkeys are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes. Of the two F1 hybrids between these two species, a mule is easier to obtain than a hinny...
was beaten to death on the bridge by its drunken owner because it refused to cross the bridge. Another story involves the mule having a heart attack from being spooked by a calliope
Calliope (music)
A calliope is a musical instrument that produces sound by sending a gas, originally steam or more recently compressed air, through large whistles, originally locomotive whistles....
playing on a barge
Barge
A barge is a flat-bottomed boat, built mainly for river and canal transport of heavy goods. Some barges are not self-propelled and need to be towed by tugboats or pushed by towboats...
going down on the nearby canal.
Bridge dimensions
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission is the governmental agency of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania responsible for the collection, conservation and interpretation of Pennsylvania's historic heritage...
(PHMC), which surveyed county engineers, historical and covered bridge societies, and others for all the covered bridges in the commonwealth. The Evans visited every covered bridge in Pennsylvania in 2001 and measured each bridge's length (portal to portal) and width (at the portal) for their book. The data in Zacher's book was based on a 1991 survey of all covered bridges in Pennsylvania by the PHMC and PennDOT, aided by local government and private agencies. The article uses primarily the NBI and NRHP data, as they are national programs.
| Length feet (m) |
Width feet (m) |
Load short tons (MT) |
Source (Year) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 25.6 metres (84 ft) | 4.3 metres (14.1 ft) | 4.5 metric tons (5 ST) | NBI National Bridge Inventory The National Bridge Inventory is a database, compiled by the Federal Highway Administration, with information on all bridges and tunnels in the United States that have roads passing above or below. This is similar to the grade crossing identifier number database compiled by the Federal Railroad... (2007) |
| 72 feet (21.9 m)* | 11 feet (3.4 m) | 3 short tons (2.7 MT) | NRHP National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation... (1979) |
| 85 inch | 14 inch | NA | Evans (2001) |
| 72 feet (21.9 m)* | 14 feet (4.3 m) | NA | Zacher (1986) |
* Listed mainspan length only