Kern Bridge

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

From the record

“Kern Bridge or Yaeger Bridge crossed the Le Sueur River in Blue Earth County in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It was built in 1873 using a bowstring through truss design by the Wrought Iron Bridge Company.”
Wikipedia article Kern Bridge, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 28 National Register listings published here for Blue Earth County · listed in 1980 · 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. Twp. Rd. over LeSueur River, Skyline, 56001
When was it listed? July 1980
Category. structure
Also known as. Blue Earth County MRA
Township. South Bend township
Architect. Wrought Iron Bridge Company
National Register reference number. 80001950 - 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.

The ground it stands on

2,306 words

This property stands in South Bend Township. History of Blue Earth County and Biographies of Its Leading Citizens, published 1901 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 South Bend Township - 2,306 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.

Fires near this property

2 since 2009

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 2 fires within 5 miles of Kern Bridge between 2009 and 2013, burning about 6 acres in total. None 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
Railroad operations and maintenance	1
Fireworks	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
5 July 2013	Fireworks	5.0 acres	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
16 March 2009	Railroad operations and maintenance	1.0 acres	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named

Every fire recorded in Blue Earth County

Mines and quarries near this property

7 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 7 workings within 5 miles of Kern Bridge: 4 producers, 2 occurrences, 1 past producer. 4 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Silica, Clay. 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
Blue Earth County Clay Deposit No 2	Clay	Occurrence
Blue Earth County Sand Bed	Silica	Occurrence
Fairbanks Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Vetter Main Quarry & Mill	Limestone, Dimension	Producer
Guaranteed Gravel & Sand Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Hanel Sand & Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Prange Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer

Every working recorded in Blue Earth 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
Charles Chapman House	3.2 miles	1980
J. R. Brandrup House	3.5 miles	1980
Minneopa State Park WPA/Rustic Style Historic Resources	3.5 miles	1989
William Irving House	3.6 miles	1980
Lincoln Park Residential Historic District	3.7 miles	1995
Adolph O. Eberhart House	3.8 miles	1980

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 80001950 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Blue Earth County	All 28 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.