High Bridge

High Bridge is a sixteen-acre district on a former rail line east of Farmville, where two bridges cross the Appomattox River flood plain. The first, built in 1854 for the South Side Railroad, was a timber Burr-arch truss carried on brick piers with granite and sandstone abutments. At 2,400 feet long and up to 125 feet high, it was among the largest bridges in the world in its day. Its wooden superstructure is gone, but both abutments and thirteen brick piers survive. Beside it stands the 1914 steel plate-girder trestle, 2,418 feet long on twenty-one steel towers, built by the Virginia Bridge and Iron Company. The site matters for its role in Virginia's railroad network and for Civil War events, including the 1865 fighting as Confederate forces retreated west. It also shows the change from timber and masonry to steel in bridge building. The old rail corridor is now a pedestrian park.