BRIDGES OF WASHINGTON, D.C.

There are many pedestrian-only trail bridges scattered throughout Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC, and most are utilitarian and unremarkable. However, there is a set of historically-important bridges which are worth seeing.

​

In August 1933, a major storm flooded Rock Creek Park in two to four feet of water, damaging multiple footbridges beyond repair. This occurred only two months after the Depression-era Public Works Administration (PWA) had been established, and its staff had begun to look for civil works projects to construct. The PWA got to work replacing the footbridges immediately, with new footbridges designed by the National Park Service according to their newly developed concept of “parkitecture.” Although the bridges were constructed of durable, inexpensive concrete, the concrete arches sit on natural-looking stone piers, and are shaped and colored to fit into the surrounding rustic landscape.

​

Although each of the seven footbridges is unique in its details, they are all of the same basic construction type and appearance. Each bridge is a low concrete arch, about one-hundred-feet long, and placed on stone-faced abutments, wing walls, and piers to present a rustic appearance to park visitors and hikers. The concrete deck forming the arch is of a uniform thickness on some of the bridges, being flat on both the top and bottom. On other bridges, the top is flat, but the bottom is scalloped, with the deck being thicker at the abutments and piers and thinner in between. All but one of them have a post-and-rail railing, evoking the appearance of a rustic split-rail fence, but it is only after close examination that the railings on some of the bridges can be seen to be made of concrete and only treated to look like wood. Most of them also have their 1934 construction date stamped into the concrete. Their most striking similarity is that they all cross a lovely babbling stream flowing through the woods and rocks just a few blocks from the busy city streets.

​

From upstream to downstream, the historic footbridges are Boundary, Riley Spring, Rolling Meadow, Rapids, and Bluffs within Rock Creek Park, and then Saddle Club and Devil’s Chair adjacent to Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway. An eighth footbridge, at Peirce Mill, was constructed in 1982 in the same style as the 1934 footbridges. There is also a nice, modern-day wooden footbridge crossing Fenwick Branch just south of Boundary Bridge, and an unusual wooden arch footbridge found underneath the Klingle Road Bridge near the Zoo.

​

A detailed description of all of the bridges in Rock Creek Park, including the trail bridges as well as the enormously high and decorated arch bridges, is provided in my new book, Bridges of Washington, DC: A History and Guide.