Talk:Cabin Creek Covered Bridge
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Bridge Type
editCopying this insertion from an earlier version of this article verbatim in the original format. RevelationDirect (talk) 00:27, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
'''UPDATED AND CORRECTED INFORMATION'
Numerous dates have been listed over several decades for the construction of the Cabin Creek Bridge. Fiscal Court records quoted by Rev. O. G Ragan in his History of Lewis County, Kentucky. Press of Jennings and Graham, 1912, list 1869 as the date of charter of the Cabin Creek Turnpike; 1870 as the date in which the turnpike company was authorized to cross Cabin Creek "at William Henderson's;" and 1871 as the date of construction of the bridge. The circa 1914 Bower reconstruction has been confirmed through announcement in the Maysville Evening Bulletin to have begun in September, 1907.
The builder of the Cabin Creek Bridge was generally and officially stated as unknown for decades. In recent years it has been attributed to both Jacob Bower and to William Henderson - then owner of adjacent property. The assertion that Henderson constructed the bridge is based upon a letter written in the 1970s to the Vanceburg newspaper disputing a statement made in an article that the bridge was constructed by Mackey Hughes. The author of the letter was Ms. Birdie Henderson, great great granddaughter of William Henderson.It has been handed down through several generations of the henderson family that Mr. Henderson was the builder of the bridge. From Fiscal Court records transcribed in Ragan, the builder of the bridge was "a Mr. Bryant of Ohio." "Mr. Bryant" was in all likelihood Josiah Bryant, a noted covered bridge builder from Mt. Orab, Brown County, Ohio. The structural and empirical details of several Ohio covered bridges confirmed to have been built by Bryant validate this contemporaneous documentation.
Cabin Creek is NOT a Burr truss. The definition of it and several other bridges as a "Burr truss" was proposed by Vernon White in a paper he wrote titled "A Treatise on the Burr Family of Trusses." Vernon had determined that the "multiple kingpost" truss was an unarched variation of the Burr and this information has been used frequently to describe these trusses in Kentucky. Vernon was a sociologist and had no formal training in structure. His treatise is generally accepted as flawed and not well researched.
The specific improvement that Burr advanced in bridge design was to place the roadway BETWEEN the arches as opposed over them. As the triangle is the most sturdy structure in engineering, use of the simple multiple kingpost was sensible in stiffening the arch. User:KyCoveredBridge