Uintah Bridge, Spanning Weber River at 6600 South Street, Uintah

Source document Quoted word for word from HAER UTAH,29-UINT,1-. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

Spanning the Weber River at 6600.South Street, about 4 miles southerly of Ogden, Utah Uintah, Weber County, Utah Quad: Ogden, Utah feet East and 100 feet North from Southwest, Corner, Section 21, T. R. lW Date of Construction: Not known, circa

Source document Quoted word for word from HAER UTAH,29-UINT,1-. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

The bridge is a single lane through Pratt truss Report assembled by: Hugh M. Wheelock, P.E. Templeton, Linke and Associates Salt Lake City, Utah January Edited for Transmittal by: Jean P. Yearby, HAER, Uintah Bridge HAER No. UT-37 (Page 2) South Street parallels the Union Pacific Railroad tracks through the town of Uintah, and no doubt originated when the transcontinental railroad was being constructed through the area. The "railroad" town was a booming metropolis of several thousand people. The street probably terminated west of the townsite at a point where the steep hillside forced the railroad over to the Weber River, leaving no room for the street.

A road from the mouth of Weber Canyon, east of the townsite running westerly to Ogden City, was then located on the opposite side of the river through territory that is now South Weber City. Some time later, probably about a road was constructed from the terminated South Street across the Weber River and connected to the South Weber Road, at which time the Uintah Bridge was probably constructed. The Uintah Bridge is a single-lane steel and wood "through truss" bridge. It is an example of the Pratt type, one of the two most common metal truss bridge designs used in the United States from the through the turn of the century.l It is a single span bridge with a length of relatively along for Pratt type bridges, which were designed for a maximum span of 150 feet.

2 The bridge has a 17' 5 11 vertical clearance and an overall width of with a wide roadway. Steel was used for the primary structural members--the top and bottom chords, end posts, floor beams and web members. The stringers and deck are made of wood. The structural condition of the bridge is significantly deteriorated due to the effects of age, neglect and improper repairs, but its visual appearance remains virtually unaltered. The steel components of the bridge are badly rusted and welds have been improperly used to repair some of the portions damaged by stress. Several of the wood stringers are broken or otherwise damaged. The wood deck currently on the bridge was installed in replacing an earlier, but not original, badly damaged wood deck.

No specific information could be found regarding the exact construction date, engineer or builder of the bridge. One undocumented story claims that the bridge was originally located several miles downstream at Riverdale where the existing viaduct of U. S. Highway 91 crosses the Weber River.3 Apparently, as related in the story, the bridge was disassembled and moved to its current location in the However, being a narrow, single-lane bridge, it was probably intended for use on a secondary road, such as the one it presently serves, rather than on a primary roadway such as the Riverdale Road.

The bridge provided primary access to the railroad siding where sugar beets grown in South Weber were loaded onto rail cars for shipment to the sugar factories in Ogden for refining during the and The bridge connects the small town of Uintah with the main highway across the Weber River and provides access to the frontage road for that highway, Interstate 84. The estimated date of construction, c. is probably the earliest likely date, since only a few of the ninteenth century metal truss Pratt bridges have survived to the present. Uintah Bridge HAER No. UT-37 (Page 3) Footnotes 1 History News, Vol. 32, No. 5 (May pp. 2 Ibid 3 Conservation with Mr. Lenord Brown, resident of South Weber, October 33,