Perkinsville Bridge – Perkinsville AZ

Description

The Perkinsville Bridge over Verde River in Arizona was built with the help of the New Deal.  Perkinsville was the site of a quarry at the time that shipped lime to the cement plant at Clarksdale; it is a ghost town today.

The Perkinsville Bridge was built in 1936 by the Arizona Highways Department using relief workers hired out of transient (homeless) camps along the Verde River, with the aid of Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) funds (probably via the Arizona Relief Administration). 

The design was done by Arizona Highways Bridge Engineer Ralph Hoffman, basically a concrete base on which the steel superstructure was laid.  In an unusual twist, the two cantilever sections came from an earlier bridge across the Gila River on the San Carlos Reservation, which was first dismantled by the FERA workers so that it, too, could be replaced by a new bridge.

“In January 1936 Arizona Highway Department Bridge Engineer Ralph Hoffman designed new concrete substructures to use three salvaged spans from the San Carlos Bridge at two locations in the Prescott National Forest Yavapai County. Laborers enlisted from the Arizona Transient Camp dismantled the San Carlos Bridge that summer and built the Perkinsville and Walnut Creek Bridges. The two structures have since functioned unaltered at these relatively remote forest crossings.” (ADT 20xx)

After 1934, the transient residents of the camps were employed throughout Arizona for light construction work. According to ADT, “The re-erection of these three trusses in the Prescott National Forest marked a part of a cooperative program developed in 1934 by the Arizona State Transient Directors and the US Forest Service to provide suitable labor projects for the vast army of ‘unemployed transients’ housed in transient camps across the state. Although other such transient-built public works undoubtedly still remain in Arizona, these are the only known examples of bridges constructed as part of this federal relief program.”

The Perkinsville bridge is 330’ long and 14.11’ wide, with two cantilever sections.  The bridge’s superstructure is riveted Pratt through-truss, a common type for vehicular bridges in the United States.  It is still standing and in use, as is its twin, the Walnut Creek Bridge.