Crossing At Beaver Creek

I have almost no information about this old bridge site. Aerial photos reveal it was already out of use as early as 1955, and the size of it tends to support that. It was likely a one lane bridge and crossed Beaver Creek on NC Highway 64 between the South Yadkin River and the little community of Center.
What remains is the substructure consisting of concrete abutments on both sides of the creek. If there was ever a pier in between, any trace of it seems to have vanished. It could be that what might have been there was wooden rather than concrete like the abutments are and it simply rotted away. I imagine what was on top was metal or wooden deck stringers with a wooden deck or possibly concrete. Just a simple rural bridge like you might find anywhere around North Carolina during the time period this one was in use.

Here’s the old road bed approaching the bridge. You can see the current NC-64 at left on a higher plane than this original bridge.

The old road surface looking back, again with NC-64 visible. The original road either curved down towards the bridge or the whole path of the highway was different some time before 1955.

Standing on top looking at the abutment on the eastern side. These abutments are made of poured concrete that look to have been put down in layers with what are probably some type of rebar-like layers between. Of course, I don’t know dates for this bridge, but these could be 100 years old.

Here’s a box culvert that runs under the newer NC-64 road surface.

Looking south down Beaver Creek standing in front of the culvert.

I don’t know if these stacked rocks are original or were added later, but it seems someone was trying to control erosion along the wings of the abutment on the eastern side.

From the south side.

This metal wire can be seen exposed in several places on the face of both abutments. I don’t know if it’s part of the metal structure in between concrete layers or some sort of “rebar ties” used to hold metal together. Rebar like we use today is a product of the 1940’s and before that there were a lot of variations and gauges used. I’m not an expert on the subject, so I can’t say for sure what this is.