Historical Marker · No. 378
Bryan Bridge
Cherry County · Nebraska
Erected by Department of Roads; Nebraska State Historical Society
The bridge carries plaques older than this one. The 1988 National Register nomination quotes a steel tablet naming it for Governor Charles W. Bryan on September 30, 1932, its dedication day, from the Valentine Chamber of Commerce, the Cherry County commissioners and "the Sioux Indians," and a second bearing the steel institute's Class C award. The nomination calls the design the only one of its kind in Nebraska. Its center is a 145-foot pin-jointed arch between 72-foot anchor arms, and in 1988 it still carried about 1,495 vehicles a day. US 20 now crosses about 2,000 feet north.
What the plaque says
Bryan Bridge This arched cantilever truss bridge, connected in the center with a single pin, 'is the only one of its kind in the United States. It was built in 1932 by the Department of Public Works and named by the local citizenry in honor of Governor Charles Wayland Bryan. The bridge is 289 feet long, has a 24-foot roadway, and cost $55,564. It was designed by Josef Sorkin, who immigrated from Russia in 1923 and graduated from the University of Nebraska College of Engineering in 1929. This particular design was chosen because it was aesthetically compatible with the surrounding en- vironment of the Niobrara River Valley. The Bryan Bridge was selected as the "Most Beautiful Steel Bridge of 1932 in Class C" by the American Institute of Steel Construction, and was the first bridge between Wisconsin and the Pacific Coast to receive such an award. In 1988 the bridge was listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and in 1995 it was designated as a State Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the Nebraska Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Department of Roads Nebraska State Historical Society
Where it stands
42.83185, -100.52730 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge — 5.0 miAn army post built in 1880 to watch the Sicangu Lakota at Rosebud, turned in 1912 into a refuge where bison and elk graze above the Niobrara east of Valentine.
- Smith Falls State Park — 11 miNebraska's highest waterfall, a spring-fed creek dropping 63 feet into a shaded canyon off the Niobrara, where Ice Age birch and an aspen hybrid found nowhere else still grow.
- Valentine National Wildlife Refuge — 24 miAbout 72,000 acres of Sandhills lakes, marsh and grass south of Valentine, set aside in 1935 for nesting birds, where prairie chickens and sharp-tailed grouse dance in April.
- Buechel Memorial Lakota Museum — 29 miA Jesuit's half-century of Lakota words, plants and photographs, gathered with Lakota catechists on the Rosebud and kept where the objects were made and used.