Photograph by Elliott, Joseph, creator, Public domain. Via
Wikimedia Commons.
Dresden Suspension Bridge
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1978. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
one of 70 National Register listings in Muskingum County · listed in 1978 · category: Structure.
National Register reference number.78002153- 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.
Fires near this property
25 since 2012
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 25 fires within 5 miles of Dresden Suspension Bridge between
2012 and 2020, burning about 116 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
Debris and open burning
14
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
7
Power generation/transmission/distribution
3
Smoking
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 379 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Dresden Suspension Bridge between 1866 and
1974: 240 Animalia, 119 Plantae, 19 Fungi, 1 Chromista. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A. Spreitzer, Andreas, Barbara; Cusick, Allison, Buker, W.C. and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
4 workings within 5 miles of Dresden Suspension Bridge: 2 past producers, 2 producers.
2 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Dresden, the town this property stands in, in 28 storm reports between 1996 and 2025: 20 thunderstorm wind, 5 hail, 3 flash flood.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
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.
Named in the fire insurance atlases
Sanborn surveyors printed an index of the
town's establishments at the front of each atlas. This property is named in
one, read straight off the scanned sheet.
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
tower is pinned into the piers, thus allowing the towers to rotate on these two-channel steel posts connected with latticework, with all connections being are connected to the top'chord of the Warren truss system. The truss system itself The original latticework guard railings are intact, with the width of the roadway c. 400' in width. CONDITION UNEXPOSED UNALTERED DETERIORATED EXCELLENT XALTERED FAIR light green.
The Dresden Suspension Bridge spans the Muskingum River at the east boundary CHECK ONE XGOOD The bridge over the Muskingum River at Dresden is a suspension bridge hanger bars with tension maintained through the use of turnbuckles.These hangers nearest to the village of Dresden,188'.The bridge is anchored into concrete nected by riveted latticework.The trusses are 9.5' in height.The eastern span the river bed.At.the.point of crossing the river has a gravel bed and is -RUINS consists of three panels; the center of 1l panels; and the western on 12 panels.
piers;it rests on two piers sunk into the channel of the in turn spans:the easternmost is 42'in the constructed of a series of eye bars,6'xl°1/4",with pin connectors set at regular of the village of Dresden, at the east line of Jefferson Township. The eastern support the two towers located at the juncture of the spans. The base of each is a pony Warren system with verticals comprised of channel and angle iron con- and covered with a bituminous covering. The superstructure is currently painted DATE supporting Warren pony trusses.
riveted.The two upright posts of each tower are connected with channel steel being 20'.The roadway itself is of concrete reinfornce with 7 ga.corrugated steel end of the bridge is in Madison Township.The structure is suspended c.45'above AREAS OF
Statement of significance
the spring of 1913 a devastating flood swept through the valley and completely the J.A. Swingle Contracting Co., of Zanesville for the substructure, and with the Bellefontaine Bridge and Steel Co. of Bellefontaine, Ohio, for the superstructure. the Buchanan Bridge Co., which was also located in the Logan County, Ohio, town of 1400-1499 1600-1699 LAW COMMERCE ARCHITECTURE ARCHEOLOGY-HISTORIC CONSERVATION The POLITICS/GOVERNMENT SCULPTURE ART PERIOD INDUSTRY MILITARY XENGINEERING LITERATURE SIGNIFICANCE XTRANSPORTATION MUSIC structure which has served the transportation needs of the upper Muskingum River _PHILOSOPHY The Dresden Suspension Bridge is nominated for its significance as an enginnering LCOMMUNICATIONS for many in the Dresden area.
_ECONOMICS "contractors for heavy masonry, etc.," although the company apparently was active Swingle was noted in early twentieth century Zanesville City Directories as being area since its erection.It was built in 1914 on the site of an 1853 suspension ing heritage of.the Muskingum Valley, and is clearly a source.of historical pride earlier structure was the oldest suspension-bridge'west of the Alleghennies.In bridges as far west as Oklahoma and Nebraska, and at their highpoint employed 100 - 1700-1799 _SOCIAL/HUMANITARIAN -1800-1899 _RELIGION ARCHEOLOGY-PREHISTORIC COMMUNITY PLANNING bridge originally constructed under the supervision of one George Copeland. The wrecked the old bridge. Bids were let by the Muskingum County Commissioners, James for only 1910 to 1916.
The Bellefontaine Bridge and Steel Co was the successor to Today the Dresden Suspension Bridge remains a significant part of the engineer- 1914 BUILDER/ARCHITECT
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 78002153, 13 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
3 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.
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.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
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.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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