Ehrmentraut Farm Bridge in the Town of Riga, NY

This article was scraped from Rochester Subway. This is a blog about Rochester history and urbanism has not been published since 2017. The current owners are now publishing link spam which made me want to preserve this history.. The original article was published September 18, 2013 and can be found here.

     The following is a guest post submitted by       Chris Clemens      .
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The Ehrmentraut Farm Bridge is easily one of the oldest and most unique bridges in the entire United States, and that kind of distinction is something that piques my interest. There isn't exactly a ton of information out there on the internet about old bridges on private property, but I've managed to piece together its pretty cool history, and then went to check it out myself...

    Located just off Chili Ave Extension

, between Attridge and Stuart Road, the Black Creek meanders to a point where it's just a few feet from the side of the road. I did walk across it, mostly so I could get closer to such an incredible piece of history and get a closer look at the construction, but I was careful to note that I was on private property and didn't hang around too long.

   The bridge uses a unique arch system which is named for the architect himself,     Squire Whipple

. Whipple is the holder of a couple patents, one of which is his famed 'Whipple Arch', where the top chord on the bowed arch is wider at the base and narrows as it reaches its peak. Born in 1804, Whipple was just beginning his architectural studies and designing breakthrough technology at a time when it was most needed. When the     Erie Canal

opened in 1825, it made traveling East and West in Upstate NY an easy feat. Unfortunately, going North and South now required bridges, and Whipple's patents can still be seen scattered in certain parts of the state.

   The     Ehrmentraut

Farm Bridge was built in 1859 and originally existed in the canal town of     Brockport

. It was about twice the width at that time because it had three trusses. Later in 1880 it was moved a little bit east of Brockport and made into the two-truss web that you can see in these photos. Later in 1905, the Erie Canal was widened (and renamed to be the     New York State Barge Canal

) and this bridge was far too short to still be useful.

The next five years I can't seem to account for, but in 1910 a farmer in     Riga

purchased the bridge and placed it over Black Creek so he could gain access from his farm to the nearby road.

   Though the bridge has aged beautifully and there were tire tracks that seemed to indicate it had recently seen a vehicle cross over it, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't just a tad nervous of a few of those boards and their ability to hold me and my iPhone from plunging into the Black Creek    * * *

Related Links:

Info and some photos at the Library of Congress

   (note: LOC has the spelling incorrect)

More photos at HistoricBridges.org

* * *

About Chris Clemens:

Chris Clemens is a Rochester native with a degree from SUNY Brockport in Health Science. While spending nearly all his free time in research and exploration of curious landmarks, he is half of the blogging duo responsible for the     Exploring The Burned Over District

blog. Checkout the blog on     Facebook

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