Cast Iron Whipple Truss Bridge, 1869
This bridge was designed and built by Squire Whipple (1804-1887), a Union college graduate, class of 1830. Originally erected over the Erie Canal at Fultonville in Montgomery County, the bridge was moved after the canal closed in 1917 to the Cayadutta Creek in Fonda where it served as a private farm bridge. In 1997, Union College led by Professor Frank Griggs, restored the bridge and in partnership with the Town of Clifton Park, re-erected it here where a similar bridge once stood. The stone abutments of the original bridge were made higher by adding stonework from the dismantled Erie Canal aqueduct that crossed the river at Rexford.
Many wooden farmers' bridges providing access to farm land divided by the canal were also of the Whipple truss design. The canal packet boats would barely clear these bridges and passengers warned of an upcoming bridge would need to duck or get down from the top deck: hence the cry of a popular song "Low Bridge, Everybody Down." These wooden bridges are gone now, and all that remain are some of the stone abutments.
Squire Whipple, sometimes called "the father of iron bridges," patented his iron truss bridge in 1841. It became a standard design for iron bridges built in the second half of the nineteenth century. This bridge has the date "1869" cast into the top of each bow.
Marker is on Riverview Road just from Van Vranken Road, on the right when traveling east.
Courtesy hmdb.org
