Putnam County Bridge No. 159

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.

From the record

“Putnam County Bridge No. 159, also known as the Reelsville Bridge, is a historic Open spandrel bridge located in Washington Township, Putnam County, Indiana. It was designed by noted bridge architect Daniel B.”
Wikipedia article Putnam County Bridge No. 159, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 33 National Register listings published here for Putnam County · listed in 1999 · category: Structure.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 structure as contributing to the listing.
Address. Co. Rd. 650 W. over Big Walnut Cr., Reelsville, 46171
When was it listed? March 1999
Category. structure
Township. Washington township
National Register reference number. 99000302 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

What happened here

An account from the chapter on Washington township. The inset identifies its exact source book and publication year.

From Biographical and Historical Record of Putnam County, Indiana .., published 1887 - Washington Township

Guarding Against Indians

The fashion of carrying tire-arms was made necessary by the presence of roving bauds of Indians, most of whom were ostensibly friendly, but like Indians in all times, treacherous and unreliable. An Indian war was at any time probable, and all the old settlers still retain vivid recollections of Indian massacres, murders, plunder, and frightful rumors of intended raids.

Read the rest of this passage

The ground it stands on

13,785 words

This property stands in Washington Township. Biographical and Historical Record of Putnam County, Indiana .., published 1887 gives that township a chapter of its own.

The chapter covers the township.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Washington Township - 13,785 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.

Fires near this property

1 since 2017

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 1 fire within 5 miles of Putnam County Bridge No. 159 in 2017, burning under an acre in total. 1 started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Natural	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
11 May 2017	Natural	under an acre	Hoosier National Forest	MAUMEE

Every fire recorded in Putnam County

Mines and quarries near this property

4 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 4 workings within 5 miles of Putnam County Bridge No. 159: 3 producers, 1 occurrence. 3 still produce. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken, Sand and Gravel, Construction, Fire Clay (Refractory), Zinc. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
A and C Products Inc.	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Indiana State Farm Plant	Fire Clay (Refractory)	Producer
Manhattan Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Producer
Sphalerite Occurrence Z78	Zinc, Sulfur	Occurrence	Sphalerite

Every working recorded in Putnam County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Houck Covered Bridge	2.3 miles	2024
Dick Huffman Covered Bridge	3.2 miles	2024
Lycurgus Stoner House	3.3 miles	1985
Putnamville Presbyterian Church	5.4 miles	1984
Oakalla Covered Bridge	5.5 miles	2024
National Road over Deer Creek Historic District	6.2 miles	2018

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 99000302 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Putnam County	All 33 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.