Marshallton's Travelling Bridge



The "New Bridge" in Marshallton, c.1905

Editor's Note of Caution: I now have very good reason to believe that much of this post is incorrect. There was a local bridge that was moved as stated, but it was almost certainly not the Marshallton span. In the near future I'll tell the correct story. The truss bridge in Marshallton was replaced with a concrete structure in 1955.

 Most of the posts here involve coming up with an idea for a topic, doing some light research, and then passing along what we've been able to learn. Once in a while, though, something of the "Wow, I didn't know that!" variety will pop up out of the blue, or in the course of other research. When something like this happens, I want to pass it along. And as I'm sure you've figured, something like this did happen to me the other day. While doing some reading, I found out that the 110 year old bridge that spanned the Red Clay Creek in Marshallton is still around -- but not in Marshallton. In fact, it has moved twice!

The bridge in question, just one in a string that have graced the site since the late 1700's, was built across the Red Clay Creek on what is now Newport Road at the base of Duncan Road right about 1900. It is what is known as a pin-connected Pratt pony truss bridge, and in its original configuration had five panels that spanned 57'6''. The postcard above shows the bridge in its Marshallton location, just a few years after it was built. For its time, it was a modern and impressive bridge, one befitting the importance of the road it carried. Although the road now seems fairly small and out of the way, in 1900 it was part of what was known as the Lincoln Highway -- the main east-west route through Mill Creek Hundred, and from Wilmington to Newark and beyond. Kirkwood Highway would not be built for four decades, and even the Marshallton Cut-Off (the section of Old Capitol Trail between Newport Road and Stanton Road that rerouted traffic around "downtown" Marshallton) was not opened until 1931.