Frehn Bridge

Two miles west of State Route 475 in southern Springfield Township, a township road numbered 313 crosses Sideling Hill Creek on a steel bridge the county carries on its books as Huntingdon County Bridge Number 1. It is a single span of 120 feet, a pin-connected Pratt through truss with a timber deck 13.75 feet wide, resting on its original gravity-type concrete abutments and wing walls.

The nomination does not say who built it or when. It says the Huntingdon County bridge office had no information on the bridge's history, and that a search of the bridge contracts in the County Commissioners' office turned up nothing on its construction. Among the sources it lists are the county's bridge file, a PennDOT printout of county and township bridges dated August 1, 1988, and an interview with County Commissioner Martin Brown on December 9, 1988. The builder is entered as unknown, and the text says the bridge was likely built in the late 1800s.

The case for listing it rests on its type. The nomination says the Frehn Bridge is one of fewer than ten pin-connected Pratt through truss bridges still standing in the county, and that it had been well maintained and kept its material, its design and its rural setting. It was nominated for engineering at the local level under the Industrial Resources of Huntingdon County multiple property listing, on a form prepared in September 1989 by Deborah L. Suciu of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. The text draws on a 1988 report for the Historic American Engineering Record by Nancy Shedd, then president of the Huntingdon County Historical Society. The nomination reached the National Park Service on February 7, 1990. The listed property is a rectangle 130 feet by 40 feet, its corners set at the outside corners of the wing walls.

Shedd's county inventory of historic engineering and industrial sites, published by the National Park Service in 1991, repeats the history in nearly the same words, offers its own estimate of the construction date, and adds one thing the nomination does not: although the Frehn bridge stood on a remote dirt road with little traffic, it was high on the list of county bridges scheduled for replacement.

The Huntingdon County bridge office has no information on the history of the Frehn bridge in Springfield Township, and a search of bridge contracts in the County Commissioners office did not reveal any information on its construction.National Register of Historic Places nomination, Frehn Bridge (reference 90000391), section 8, p. 5 · character 4,566 of the scanned text

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

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