Runk Bridge over Aughwick Creek

Runk Bridge carries Township Road 373 over Aughwick Creek south of Shirleysburg, in Shirley Township, a quarter mile west of U.S. Route 522. It is Huntingdon County Bridge No. 9, and the nomination says county bridge records show it was built in 1889 by the Pittsburgh Bridge Company.

It is a steel Pratt through truss in two spans, pin connected, with wooden stringers under a 13-foot-wide deck of yellow pine. It has one concrete pier, and the high concrete abutments are covered with lime and cement plaster. The nomination places the bridge in a very rural part of the county, where Township Road 373 meets Township Road 380, and calls it a highly visible landmark west of Route 522 and of the active tourist section of the East Broad Top Railroad, itself a National Historic Landmark.

The bridge was listed under Criterion C, for engineering, at the local level. The nomination calls it a fine example of one of the county's fewer than ten remaining pin-connected Pratt through trusses built in the late 1800s, and says it has been well maintained and keeps its integrity of material, design and setting. The Historic American Engineering Record recorded it as PA 061.040.

Deborah L. Suciu of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission prepared the form in August 1989 as part of a multiple property listing, the Industrial Resources of Huntingdon County, 1780 to 1939. The form says plainly that it contains material taken directly from an unpublished 1988 report for the Historic American Engineering Record by Nancy S. Shedd, then president of the Huntingdon County Historical Society, whom it names as a major contributor although not the preparer. Shedd's county inventory of historic engineering and industrial sites, published by the National Park Service in 1991, carries the same entry: Bridge No. 9, built in 1889 by the Pittsburgh Bridge Company, one of the county's few remaining pin-connected Pratt through trusses. The photograph of the bridge in that inventory is by Jet Lowe.

County bridge records indicate that Bridge No. 9, or Runk Bridge, was constructed in 1889 by the Pittsburgh Bridge Company. This is a fine example of one of the county's less than ten remaining pin-connected Pratt through truss bridges built in the late 1800's.National Register of Historic Places nomination, Runk Bridge (reference 90000408), section 8 continuation sheet (PDF page 5) · character 4,513 of the scanned text

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

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