Lenape Bridge

The Lenape Bridge, a seven-arch stone bridge completed in 1912, carries State Route 52 (Lenape Road) over Brandywine Creek in Lenape, Pennsylvania.

During the American Revolution, the area below the confluence of the east and west branches of Brandywine Creek was known as Skunk’s Ford. ^[2] Many years after the Battle of Brandywine, a wooden open-deck bridge was built at the ford. The area was renamed Wistar’s Bridge after the family who owned farmland west of the creek. This bridge connected Pocopson Township on the west with Birmingham Township on the east.

In 1855, John Sager acquired a stone grist mill on the east side of the bridge. ^[2] The following year, a new covered bridge replaced the open-deck structure. Built by Jackson Kimble and John L. Wiley for $1,900, it spanned 150 feet and had a deck width of 12 feet, 6 inches. Known as Sager’s Bridge, it became a prominent crossing.

The covered bridge was demolished in 1891–92 and replaced with an open-deck wooden bridge, allowing the newly formed West Chester Street Railway to extend trolley service over the Brandywine Creek. ^[2]

In 1911, the Chester County Commissioners funded a new bridge at Lenape to span the floodplain between the wooden bridge and Creek Road to the east. ^[2] This “flood bridge” ensured passage between West Chester and western points during high water when other crossings were impassable. To build the new bridge, the abandoned Sager’s Mill was demolished. Stones from the mill and another structure near West Chester provided materials for the new masonry bridge.

Designed by Chester County Engineer Nathan R. Rambo and constructed by the Corcoran Construction Company of West Chester, the seven-arch Lenape Bridge was completed in 1912. ^[1]

The Lenape Bridge was rehabilitated in 1980, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988, and renovated again in 2020.