Occoquan High Bridge

Here follows an excerpt from "The Iron Road of Franconia," a book written by Nathaniel Lee:

The largest single feat of engineering undertaken by the Alexandria and Fredericksburg Railway Company in Fairfax County was the construction of the Occoquan High Bridge in 1872.

Some rail buffs might have jumped for joy in 1872 when passengers on the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac could finally ride the rails all the way from Fredericksburg to Washington. Previously, they disembarked at Aquia (later Quantico) and boarded a steamer to Washington.

Part of that ride was the first rail bridge over the Occoquan just west of where Mason’s ferry had taken passengers over to Colchester. H.K. Bradshaw of Alexandria built the trestle structure. Griffin, quoting the Gazette, tells us a “goodly gathering of the citizens of Prince William County and a number of fair ladies” were on hand.

The torrents of rain waters returned in 1889 and damaged the bridge. The Southern Railway rebuilt it in 1892 with a metal Pratt truss.

Rebuilt in 1915, it spans 920 feet across the Occoquan River at a height of seventy feet above the water to avoid the need for a drawbridge. Known as a "Parker through truss bridge" after its designer Charles H. Parker, the truss design is a common feature of railroad bridges in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A Parker bridge is distinct in that when viewing the bridge from the side, the triangles forming the superstructure appear in the shape of a camel's hump. Some bridges of this type remain scattered throughout Maryland, but their numbers are dropping rapidly as newer bridges take their place.

The original 1872 and rebuilt 1892 railroad bridges were not wide enough to accommodate the two tracks that the Washington Southern Railway wanted, so the celebrated engineer Gustav Lindenthal rebuilt the Occoquan High Bridge just two years before designing his most memorable bridge, the Pennsylvania Railroad's Hell Gate Bridge in New York City. Lindenthal loved public art sculptures and wanted his bridges not only to serve their purpose of ferrying people and trains, but also to serve as a work of public art for the community, pleasing to view. In working on the Occoquan High Bridge, Lindenthal had the mighty Phoenix Iron Company behind him. Phoenix Iron started in 1783 near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and would remain one of the most prolific bridge builders in the country even 200 years later.

The true testament to the quality workmanship and design of the bridge was when Hurricane Agnes hit in 1972. The High Bridge survived the worst natural disaster to hit Fairfax County in the twentieth century, while the two neighboring bridges carrying vehicular traffic across the Occoquan River were badly damaged (in the case of the Route 1 bridge) or destroyed altogether (in the case of the historic Route 123 bridge). The Occoquan High Bridge is listed on the Fairfax County Inventory of Historic Sites.