Scrapped, Not Saved: Why Historic Bridges Keep Losing

Last year, the McPherson’s Ford Bridge in Alleghany County, Virginia, came down for scrap.

Built in 1897, the span had carried traffic across the Jackson River for more than a century before a new two-lane structure bypassed it in 2013. The state concluded that structural deterioration left the truss with little reuse potential, and crews lifted it apart piece by piece and set the remains in an adjoining field to be hauled off.

But that raises an obvious question. If a crane could hold the thing in the air intact, why couldn’t the stringers and floor beams have been rehabilitated and the bridge reused elsewhere on a pedestrian-only trail? The loads on a rail trail or park crossing are a fraction of what a highway span carries. Individual members that fail a vehicular rating can often still serve a walking bridge, and even where the original metal is too far gone, the pin connections, portal bracing, and lattice work carry historical value that a scrap price never reflects.

Other states have found ways to make this work. Marketing programs and adaptive reuse policies have moved surplus trusses to parks, campuses, and greenways rather than the scrapyard, but the process depends on a willing recipient stepping forward, a place to store the span in the meantime, and someone covering relocation costs. When those pieces don’t line up, the default is demolition, because demolition is fast and requires no partner.

Not that these bridges are beyond saving, but that the system is built to dispose of them faster than anyone can organize a rescue. It wouldn’t have been as much to dismantle the bridge and store it for future reuse, an idea that would have been worth revisiting after Hurricane Helene washed out numerous bridges along the Virginia Creeper Trail. Why do we keep tearing down historic structures that still have value left in them?