The Penn Bridge Company's 1898 truss at Birmingham

Where the Little Juniata River passes Birmingham, a steel truss bridge carries a plank deck across from Warriors Mark Township in Huntingdon County to the Blair County side. The nomination places it just off Route 453, immediately north of the entrance to the town, and it belongs to two counties at once: it is Blair County Bridge number 48 and Huntingdon County Bridge number 15. Blair County does the maintenance and the two counties share the cost equally.

The Penn Bridge Company of Beaver Falls erected it in 1898 to replace a wooden bridge built in 1852. It is a single span Pratt through truss, 137 feet long and pin connected, with a deck 14.7 feet wide of three inch plank on steel stringers and beams, resting on cut stone abutments. At each end a metal crest tops the upper chord, cut with six quatrefoils. As built it carried a pedestrian sidewalk on the downstream side, later removed.

By the time the form was prepared in 1989 the bridge saw little traffic. The nomination calls it the only means of access to two dwellings on the Blair County side of the river, so its five ton weight limit was no hardship, and Nancy Shedd's 1991 inventory of the county's engineering sites for the Historic American Engineering Record adds that with so little demand it was unlikely to be replaced. It had been sandblasted and painted in 1978, and a 1987 inspection found it in good condition, recommending that the deck be renailed and more nailers added in time.

The nomination says it is one of fewer than ten pin connected Pratt through truss bridges of the late 1800s remaining in the county, and it was put forward for engineering under Criterion C at the local level. The nomination counts the loss of the sidewalk as the one exception to the bridge's integrity of material, design and setting. A color photograph of the bridge, taken in 1979, appears on page 109 of Second Century, the Huntingdon County Historical Society's 1987 bicentennial album.

The bridge was erected in 1898 by the Penn Bridge Corapany of Beaver Falls, Pa., to replace a wooden bridge constructed in 1852. As built, it included a pedestrian sidewalk on the downstream side, which was later removed.National Register of Historic Places nomination, Birmingham Bridge (reference 90000400), section 8, continuation page 2 (PDF page 5) · character 5,041 of the scanned text

Checked 2026-09-05 · National Register of Historic Places nomination, read in full

← All stories from Warriors Mark township

Have something to add to this story, or a photograph of it? Send it here →