Corbin Bridge

Two miles southeast of Huntingdon, Township Road 428 crosses the Raystown Branch on a one-lane suspension bridge half a mile from the branch's junction with the Juniata River. It is Huntingdon County Bridge No. 20, known as Corbin Bridge, and the nomination says it is the only road suspension bridge in the county.

The nomination says a Penelec hydroelectric dam on the Raystown Branch gave way in the St. Patrick's Day flood of 1936 and swept away the bridge that stood here, an early bridge of unknown design. The Huntingdon County Historical Society's 1937 sesquicentennial souvenir book printed a picture of the Raystown Dam after the flood and called the flood of March 17, 1936, probably the most destructive the Juniata Valley had ever experienced. The replacement was constructed in 1937. County bridge records state that it was fabricated by Reading Steel Products, Inc. Why a suspension design was chosen is not known.

The bridge hangs from two-and-three-eighths-inch prestressed wire rope cables made by Roebling & Son of Trenton, New Jersey, carried on 39-foot steel towers and anchored in concrete deadmen. A double intersecting Warren truss stiffens the span, and the wood deck, 12.5 feet wide, is paved with macadam. High cut-stone and concrete abutments with wings appear to predate the bridge.

It was designed to carry a ten-ton limit. In 1972, the nomination says, a macadam surface added to the deck increased the weight of the bridge itself, and the limit was reduced to seven tons. An inspection report cited in the nomination says an excessive load in 1980 buckled the east truss and the limit was set at three tons until the truss was repaired in 1981. The damage was so slight or so well repaired that it cannot be distinguished. The bridge serves one farm, a small number of year-round residences and a cluster of vacation cottages along the Juniata.

The form, prepared in September 1989 by a preservation specialist at the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission with material taken from Nancy Shedd's 1988 Historic American Engineering Record report, nominated the bridge for its engineering under the Industrial Resources of Huntingdon County listing. It says the bridge is the only suspension road bridge in the PennDOT district covering Huntingdon, Blair, Cambria, Somerset, Bedford and Fulton counties, and that PennDOT employees familiar with the region's bridges thought it might be unique over a far wider area.

The bridge design is highly unusual for the area: it is the only suspension road bridge in the PennDOT district which includes Huntingdon, Blair, Cambria, Somerset, Bedford and Fulton Counties.National Register of Historic Places nomination, Corbin Bridge (reference 90000402), 90000402, p. 5 · character 5,499 of the scanned text

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

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