Could the entrance to an enormous treasure be somewhere on top of that thing??





After the new Key Bridge opened to traffic in 1923, the old one, now cut off from traffic at both ends, stood wasting away in the river for ten years. Congress had stipulated that it be removed but hadn't provided any funds to do so. The Depression-era Civil Works Administration finally supervised the removal of the bridge's iron superstructure in 1933, although the old stone piers remained in place.  It wasn't until 1962 that the Army Corps of Engineers removed the tops of the piers to facilitate boat racing on the river. The large stone abutment on the Georgetown side was left in place, as was one pier close to the Virginia side. The stumps of the rest of the original stone piers, so painstakingly constructed in the 1830s, remain to this day 12 feet below the low-water mark, presumably never to be seen again.

The Aqueduct Bridge's Georgetown abutment (Photo by the author).

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Sources for this article included: Gary A. Burch and Steven M. Pennington, eds., Civil Engineering Landmarks of the Nation's Capital (1982); Benjamin Franklin Cooling III and Walton H. Owen II, Mr. Lincoln's Forts (2010); D.C. Department of Highways, Washington's Bridges Historic and Modern (1956); Historic American Buildings Survey, Potomac Aqueduct (HABS DC-166); James M. Goode, Capital Losses (2003); Robert C. Horne, "Bridges Across the Potomac" in Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Vol. 53/56 (1956); Vincent Lee-Thorp, Washington Engineered (2006); Donald Beekman Myer, Bridges and the City of Washington (1974); Pamela Scott, Capital Engineers (2005); and numerous newspaper articles.

Posted 6th February 2012 by Streets of Washington