Footbridge to Fun

Footbridge to Fun. City Park Foot Bridge. , The City Park is a peninsula created by an oxbow on the Sheyenne River. Three bridges were built on this oxbow to provide access to the park and for crosstown traffic. , The original wooden footbridge, located at this site, was built in 1881, the same year that the Benson subdivision became the City Park. The bridge served park visitors for 30 years. It was condemned and replaced by the present steel structure. , The current bridge, built in 1911 by A. Y. Bayne and Co., has been in service for over a century. It has been and continues to be the gateway to recreation for the citizens of Valley City., [photo and illustration captions] , . This unusual steel footbridge is sometimes called the Elks Bridge because it links the Elks Building with the park. The Elks Building (behind the trees) was built in 1911, the same year as the bridge. , . This 1909 photo shows Lu Saterland and Blanche Fridd posing on the old wooden bridge in front of the Northern Pacific freight depot which was built before 1900. , . The bridge is supported by steel I-beam pilings driven into the ground to bear on the dense layer of blue clay (Pierre Shale Formation) below the river channel. , . Above is the original 1911 engineering drawing submitted by the winning bidder, A. Y. Bayne and Co. It incorporates 4 different designs , two for the walkway and two for the pile foundations. The chosen design was a clear main span of 100 feet utilizing a Warren Through Truss design arranged to keep the pilings out of the center of the channel to minimize ice damage and to allow space for the roadway which passed under the bridge on the south end. The bridge slopes downhill to the south to account for the difference in the elevations of the river banks.