Old Willow Creek Bridge

The bridge still carries the names of the county board. A cast shield fixed where the lattice bars cross reads Chris Boll, chairman, Geo. Holmes and Jacob Pilger, commissioners, and J. B. McDonald, county clerk. In Gilman Park the truss now carries a walking path, an old plank deck between rust-brown lattice rails, over a weedy channel on concrete abutments. A. T. Andreas's 1882 history of Pierce County names Willow Creek and Dry Creek as the western branches of the North Fork of the Elkhorn, and Pierce itself began on Willow Creek's bank.

What the plaque says

Old Willow Creek Bridge This bridge originally spanned Willow Creek southwest of Pierce. It was fabricated in 1913 by the Canton (Ohio) Bridge Company, which held Pierce County's bridge contract between 1905 and 1918. It was moved here in 1994. The thirty-four-foot steel span is configured as a rigid-connected lattice pony truss, a very old truss type commonly used in wood for covered bridges. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1992, it was one of two of its type in Nebraska at the time. City of Pierce Pierce Historical Society Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Gilman Park — steps away
• St. John's Lutheran Church — 1.9 mi
• The Meridian Highway: From Canada to Mexico — 3.8 mi
• St. Paul's Lutheran Church — 12 mi