- City:
- Richfield, KS
- Site Type:
- Roads, Bridges, and Tunnels, Infrastructure and Utilities
- New Deal Agencies:
- Works Progress Administration (WPA), Work Relief Programs
- Completed:
- 1939
- Designer:
- Paul Heyman Sr.
- Quality of Information:
- Very Good
- Site Survival:
- Extant
Description
A substantial, 96-foot-long bridge in rural southwest Kansas, located six miles west and four miles north of Richfield, was constructed by the Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.). Officially completed in 1939, and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986, the bridge carries Road 9 over the “North Fork of the North Fork of the Cimarron River.” A large wooden display with a write-up of the project’s significance accompany the bridge at a modest pull-off location at its southeast corner.
NRHP: “Its significance as a stone arch bridge is supplemented by the fact it also represents the operations of the Works Progress Administration and one of its ‘make work’ projects. As one of the main objects of such construction was to provide employment for as many men as possible, the projects were labor intensive. The result was a bridge that is more highly finished and more monumental in appearance than the rubble type structures.”
Construction involved 2,559 man-hours of labor. W.P.A. Official Project (O.P.) No. 465-82-1-353.
Source notes
National Register of Historic Places nomination form:
https://www.kshs.org/resource/national_register/nominationsNRDB/Morton_MortonCountyWPABridgeNR.pdf
Display on site
Site originally submitted by Evan Kalish on February 4, 2018.
Additional contributions by Barbara Pendleton.
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