Laughery Creek Bridge

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Laughery Creek Bridge
Laughery Creek Bridge, 1974
Crosses	Laughery Creek
Locale	Dearborn County, Indiana and Ohio County, Indiana
Design	Tripple-intersection Pratt truss
Longest span	297.5 feet (90.7 m)
Total length	298.8 feet (91.1 m)
Width	17 feet (5.2 m)
Vertical clearance	21.4 feet (6.5 m)
Opening date	1878
Coordinates	39°01′29″N, 89°53′09″W

The Laughery Creek Bridge is an abandoned truss bridge on the border of Dearborn County, Indiana and Ohio County, Indiana. It crosses Laughery Creek. This bridge was built in 1878. The Wrought Iron Bridge Company, a prolific late 1800s bridge company, constructed the bridge. The bridge is seated on stone abutments. The deck surface is not original and is currently concrete. The bridge, nearly 300 feet in length, is a single span pin connected triple intersection Pratt through truss, and is the only example in the world of this truss type. The name bridge's nickname, "Triple Whipple Bridge" is a play on words. The double-intersection Pratt, which was called the Whipple truss configuration, was a far more common variation of the standard Pratt configuration. Since the Laughery Creek Bridge's members have three intersections instead of two, this gives rise to the "Triple Whipple" name. This bridge is currently on the National Register of Historic Places.