Bridge No: 0140018400100

Asset ID: 1159

County: Abbeville

Facility Carried: SC 184

Feature Intersected: Rocky River (Secession Lake)

Year Built: 1941

Main Structure Type: Steel Stringer

Design: Continuous

Main Material: Steel

Railing Type: Concrete 1 bar cantilevered off brush curb railings

Number of Main Spans: 8

Structure Length: 521 feet

Structure Width: 26.5 feet

Setting: The bridge carries a 2-lane state highway over the north end of a lake created in 1940-41 behind the Rocky River dam that was started in 1933 and finished in 1940.The dam and powerhouse are at the south end of the lake.The bridge setting is wooded with marinas beyond its northeast and southwest quadrants.

The skewed, low rise, 8 span, 521'-long continuous steel stringer bridge is supported on 2-column reinforced concrete piers with horizontally scored columns and web walls. The bridge is composed of two, 3-span, continuous spans with lengths of 65'-80'-65'. There are four lines of 36"-deep wide-flange beams and riveted splice plates. The 49'-long end spans are simply supported. The bridge has a concrete deck and 1-rail high concrete railings cantilevered from the brush curbs.

The state highway department designed and built the continuous-design steel stringer bridge over Secession Lake in 1940-41 to improve the route connecting Iva and Antreville. The route, which crosses the north end of the man-made lake, was taken into the state highway system in 1927. The lake is the impoundment behind the Rocky River dam and powerhouse completed by the City of Abbeville in 1940. The hydroelectric facility was started by private investors as the Abbeville Power Company in 1933, but they were not able to complete it. The city took it over in 1938 and finished the facility using federal Public Works Administration (PWA) funding. The municipally owned power plant provided electricity to Abbeville’s residents and textile mills. The dam and powerhouse were recorded by the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) in 1980-82 as part of USACE’s Savannah District of development of the Lake Russell flood control project, which abuts the hydroelectric plant’s dam and tail race. The bridge (Bridge Survey #4) was not selected as meeting National Register criteria in the 1991 survey.

The wider water feature mandated construction of a longer bridge, and the state placed it on a new and improved realignment. The previous bridge, of unknown type/design, was on an alignment downstream. The new bridge continues the state highway department’s practice started about 1930 of using continuous-design steel beams to achieve economical and efficient longer span lengths. The state bridge engineers from the 1930s, Joseph Barnwell and J.W. Gooding, both recognized the advantages of continuous design beams and their value to developing the state’s burgeoning state highway system. Continuous beams became one of the most commonly used state standard bridge designs. Yet as common as continuous design bridges became during the pre-World War II era, few have survived without major alterations, like widening to one or both sides. The Secession Lake bridge stands as one of the few complete examples of the 65'-80'-65' standard design. It is technologically significant under criterion C for being a complete and earlier example of a type and design that was important in the pre-World War II development of the state’s highway system.