Tag: SS High Bridge (Appomattox River)

Wikipedia says: High Bridge is a historic former railroad bridge across the Appomattox River valley about 6 miles (9.7 km) east, or downstream, of the town of Farmville in Prince Edward County, Virginia. The remains of the bridge and its adjacent rail line are now a rail trail park, High Bridge Trail State Park.

In the 1850s, the Southside Railroad built a rail line between Petersburg and Lynchburg, passing through Farmville between Burkeville and Pamplin City. The route, subsidized by a contribution from Farmville, required an expensive crossing of the Appomattox River valley, at a site near property known as Overton farm.

The site was surveyed and the bridge engineered by C.O. Sanford, who later reported to the stockholders of the Southside Railroad: “there have been higher bridges not so long, and longer bridges not so high, but taking the length and height together, this is, perhaps the largest bridge in the world.”

The High Bridge’s twenty piers contained almost four million bricks, and supported a wooden superstructure with a pedestrian walkway beside the rail line – along with an adjacent wagon bridge (known also as the lower wagon bridge) — which would ultimately play a pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War. The bridge itself was completed in 1852 and the full line was completed in 1854.

American Civil War

The Southside Railroad was heavily damaged during the American Civil War. The High Bridge played a key role during Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s final retreat from Petersburg in the last days of the War. The Battle of High Bridge took place there on April 6–7, 1865. Fleeing the Union troops, the Confederates set the bridge afire after crossing it, but failed to destroy it. Union troops were able to use it and continued the chase, which ended several days later at Appomattox Courthouse, where Lee’s surrender to Union General Ulysses S. Grant took place on April 9, 1865.

Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book Of The War. Vol. 2, No. 98 says: High Bridge crossing the Appomattox, near Farmville, on South Side Railroad, Va. 1865. The South Side Railway, between Petersburg and Lynchburg, crosses the Appomattox river and its broad valley, by what is now well known as High Bridge. With one exception, it is the highest structure of the kind on this continent, being one hundred and twenty-eight feet above the level of the river, and two thousand four hundred feet in length.

On the morning of the 7th of the April, 1865, the Second Corps of the Army of the Potomac, in pursuit of the enemy, came up with them at this point. The Confederate endeavored not only to burn the railroad bridge, but also the common road bridge, which crosses the river a short distance below. The latter was fortunately saved, and but three spans of the former burned. The picture shows that this damage has since been repaired by substitution of a trestle bridge along the sections destroyed. Owing to the great height of the piers, and the haste with which the bridge was repaired, it is now rather insecure, rendering it necessary for the trains to pass over at a very slow rate of speed. At high water the river covered the whole of the flats, and extended above the stove base of the piers.