Though they're a common sight across the U.S., bridges are a truly impressive feat of engineering, often serving as important examples of architecture and flush with historical context. Here are 23 vintage images of bridges, many of which still get us to where we're going today.
Note: Dates listed are approximately when the photo was taken.
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Circa 1860s
This photograph from the 1860s shows a horse and buggy passing a man sitting on a pile of rocks at the Chain Bridge, which crosses the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. There have been numerous iterations of this bridge over the years, but it gets its name from an 1810 version supported by chains. There are no chains now.
Related: America's Most Iconic Buildings and Monuments in D.C. and Beyond
Undated
The elegant Bow Bridge is a cast-iron pedestrian bridge located in Central Park in Manhattan. It was the first cast-iron bridge in the park and is the second-oldest in the U.S. It's been around since 1862, connecting Cherry Hill to the Ramble.
Want to explore Central Park from home? Take A Virtual Weekend Vacation in New York.
Circa 1890s
A rustic bridge in Chautauqua in the late 1890s. Chautauqua is a small town, but its claim to fame is the Chautauqua Institution and the Chautauqua Movement, founded in the 1870s by John H. Vincent and Lewis Miller. It was a training program for Sunday school and church educators that spawned many similar programs across the U.S.
Circa 1891
This bridge crossed the St. Joseph River near Berrien Springs, Michigan. It would have been a popular route for summer vacationers as the river hosted many nearby summer hotels and boarding houses.
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Circa 1896
The Pennsylvania Avenue Bridge in Washington, D.C., crosses Rock Creek. It was designed by Montgomery C. Meigs and was sometimes referred to as the Meigs Bridge. The cast-iron water mains in this photo are no longer visible and have been encased in concrete since 1916. In 1913, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts objected to the redesign for aesthetic reasons, but to no avail.
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Circa 1900
The Union Arch Bridge, also known as the Cabin John Bridge, was finished in 1864 in Cabin John, Maryland. A tablet on the east abutment of the bridge would have featured the name of the bridge's designers, Montgomery Meigs and Alfred Rives. However, Rives joined the Confederate Army before the bridge was finished and so the tablet instead reads, "Union Arch, Esto Perpetua" (Let it last forever).
Circa 1901
The Echo Bridge in Newton, Massachusetts, crosses the Charles River and is named for the echo you can hear if you shout on stairs beneath the bridge. Here, a human voice can repeat up to 15 times. This image is a Photochrom print (an ink-based photolithograph).
Circa 1905
A pedestrian crosses the Harvard Bridge in Boston in this image from 1905. You can see a guard tower on the bridge and a shed owned by Boston Elevated Railways Co. in the foreground.
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Circa 1905
This image from Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, which depicts a bridge spanning the Brodhead Creek, was used as a postcard. The Brodhead Creek is a tributary of the Delaware River, located in the Poconos area.
Circa 1906
The Charlestown Bridge spans the Charles River in Boston. It was built in 1900, thus it's fairly new in this photo from 1906. Deemed structurally deficient in 2003, a replacement bridge is slated for completion in 2023.
Circa 1909
The Queensboro Bridge opened in 1909, then known as the Blackwell's Island Bridge and the fourth-longest bridge worldwide. It spans the East River between Queens and Manhattan. Today it is known as the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge.
Circa 1910
The Brooklyn Bridge crosses the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn. It opened in 1883, then the longest suspension bridge in the world. Here, pedestrians cross the bridge in 1910, less than a decade after the construction of the Queensboro and Manhattan bridges.
Circa 1921
Here's the Brooklyn Bridge in 1921, one year before motor vehicles would be banned as the bridge could not then support such heavy loads. In more recent times, following renovations to accomodate vehicles again, over 120,000 motor vehicles, 4,000 pedestrians, and 2,600 bicyclists would cross the bridge daily.
Circa 1910
The McKinley Bridge is a steel truss bridge that spans the Mississippi River between St. Louis and Venice, Illinois. It was finished in 1910. Today it serves cars, bikes, and pedestrians. Many assume the bridge was named for former president William McKinley, but it was actually named for then-president of the Illinois Traction System, whose name was also William McKinley.
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Circa 1910
This lenticular truss bridge is a National Historic Landmark designed by noted engineer Gustav Lindenthal. It crosses the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh and can be seen in the opening scenes of "Flashdance," that well-known '80s flick about a young steel mill worker who dreams of becoming a ballerina.
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Circa 1922
Stone Bridge in Prince William County, Virginia, crosses Bull Run. This one, with its striking arches, was built in 1884 to replace a previous version destroyed during the Civil War. You can see the original bridge in ruins here.
Circa 1933
In this photo from 1933, a man walks in front of a covered bridge spanning Willis River in Trent Mills, Virginia. In the distance is a grist mill. According to a Federal Highway Administration report on covered bridges, the most common reason to cover a bridge is to protect its supporting timbers.
Circa 1937
This image from 1937 by noted photographer Arthur Rothstein describes it only as a covered bridge in Plainfield, Vermont. Though there is little information from the Library of Congress accompanying the photo, this bridge looks very similar to the Martin Covered Bridge located near Plainfield village. The Martin Covered Bridge is on the National Register of Historic Places, where it's dated to 1890.
Circa 1940
This vertigo-inducing swinging bridge allowed pedestrians to cross over the Kentucky River to and from Jackson, Kentucky. The world record for such a bridge will eventually be held by a 725-foot swinging bridge in Kentucky and Virginia that will cross Russell Fork Gorge.
Circa 1941
The George Washington Bridge is a double-decked suspension bridge that crosses the Hudson River between Manhattan and Fort Lee, New Jersey. At the time this image was taken in 1941, the bridge's lights were shut off at night for safety reasons due to WWII.
Circa 1941
The Grassy Point Bridge is a rotating truss bridge that spans the St. Louis River between Duluth, Minnesota, and Superior, Wisconsin. Rick McDonald, a former bridge operator, fastened various stuffed toys to the bridge for years and other boaters have followed suit since McDonald's death in 2006. Here you can see the bridge in 1941.
Circa 1943
The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is one of the most famous bridges in the world. It opened on May 28, 1937, and is named for the Golden Gate Strait it spans. During the bridge's construction, a safety net was suspended beneath the bridge to catch workers who slipped. Nineteen men were caught by the net, which made them official members of the "Halfway-to-Hell Club."
Circa 1965
This covered bridge spanning the Doe River in Elizabethton, Tennessee, was built in 1882 and is open to pedestrian and bicycle traffic today. In June, Elizabethon throws Elizabethton Covered Bridge Days, a festival of music, a car show, food vendors, and other family-friendly activities.
Circa 1966
Here, the NASA barge Poseidon passes through the bascule bridge at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. The barge carried Saturn rocket stages and hardware used in the Apollo Program. This photo was taken in October of 1966, nearly three years before man would first land on the moon.
Related: The 50 Greatest American Inventions of the Past 50 Years
Circa 1973
The Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C., during rush hour. The Lincoln Memorial is seen in the background.
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Circa 1974
In this rust-colored image from 1974, a subway car crosses the East River in New York via the Manhattan Bridge. The bridge opened on New Year's Eve in 1909 and has four subway tracks.
Circa 1988
The Kentucky and Indiana bridge spans the Ohio River. It was built in the 1880s to connect Louisville, Kentucky and New Albany, Indiana, in alignment with two ancient roads: Great Buffalo Trace and Wilderness Road. Here it is a century later, in 1988. In recent years, there have been efforts to give pedestrians and cyclists access to part of the railroad bridge owned by the Norfolk Southern railway.