Canal Bridges

When the forty feet wide Wabash and Erie Canal cut through the Indiana wilderness, its waterway obstructed the movement of pedestrians, horse-drawn wagons, boat-towing animals, farmers, and livestock, so during the canal era beginning in 1840 in Carroll County a variety of bridge types typical of the four hundred sixty-eight mile canal were erected. These included a possible small pivot bridge at Deer Creek Guard Lock that archaeologists believe future surveys may yet document; a towing path bridge at the Deer Creek Dam spillway, where in 1874 the last boat traveling north from Lafayette approached an aging wooden structure that collapsed as a team of mules crossed, sweeping away and drowning both the driver and the team; a pivot or turn bridge at Franklin Street approved in 1849 after complaints about the road bridge, where Alice V. Jackson was chosen at its dedication to draw the bridge for the first canal packet; an arched heavy-timber road bridge at Washington Street that allowed mules to continue along the towpath without posts impeding them but was impractical for heavy loads and was later replaced by a stone bridge; a long road bridge at Founders' Point across the Delphi bayou, likely requiring a support pier because of the bayou's width; a change bridge at Paragon on Lake Wabash used to shift the towing path from one side of the canal to the other, possibly by carrying the towpath over the canal and back underneath without unhitching the animals; the Carrollton towing path bridge across the Wabash River, first built in 1844 as the canal's only main line crossing of the river, with five fixed spans, a removable draw timber section for steamboats, and a mule-powered tramway carrying towing lines across the river; and Burnett's Creek Arch, built to carry the canal high over an important stream and later converted to a road bridge on Towpath Road after canal navigation ended. Although there is no record of a pedestrian bridge in Carroll County, some communities provided them for foot traffic.

Delphi, Indiana · United States