The crossing Rockville
The last one of its kind in Utah
The 1924 bridge over the Virgin River.
Two hundred and seventeen feet of steel in a single span, built for a national touring route that lasted six years, nearly condemned in 2012, and rebuilt because about three quarters of a town of 250 people voted to keep it. It is the only Parker through truss in Utah still carrying vehicles.
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Two hundred and seventeen feet of steel, in one span.
The Rockville Bridge crosses the Virgin River on Bridge Road at the east end of town. It went up in 1924, it is a steel Parker through truss of twelve panels, it carries one lane, and it is the only surviving bridge of its type still used for vehicular travel anywhere in Utah. It has been on the National Register of Historic Places since August 1995.
A Parker truss is a Pratt with a polygonal top chord, which is the engineer's way of saying the top curves rather than running flat, so the structure is deepest in the middle where the load is greatest and uses less steel at the ends. It was a common design for a long single span in the 1920s and almost none of them are left doing their original job. This one is.
Walking it takes about four minutes and is the single best way to understand the geography of Rockville. Town and highway on one bank, empty red country on the other, the river between them, and one hundred year old steel doing the joining.
What it was for
For six years it was the road to the North Rim.
The bridge was not built for Rockville's convenience. It was built for tourism, at the moment tourism was being invented in this corner of the state.
In the 1920s the railroad and the park service were assembling the grand loop that took visitors between Zion, Bryce Canyon and the Grand Canyon's North Rim by motor coach. From 1924 until 1930 the route ran over this bridge and up over the mesa, and doing so cut roughly thirty three miles off the drive between Zion and the North Rim. For those six years a farming town of a couple of hundred people had a national touring route through the middle of it.
Then the road network moved on, as road networks do, and the bridge went back to being a local crossing. What it has carried since is the traffic of the country on the far bank: farm vehicles, the families who live out that way, visitors driving to Grafton, riders heading for the mesa, and the volunteers who keep the ghost town standing.
That is the quiet argument for keeping it. A bridge that connects a town to nothing much is easy to write off on a spreadsheet, right up to the point where you notice it is the only way into a National Register historic district. The byway over the mesa starts on the far side of it too.
Between 1924 and 1930 the fastest way from Zion Canyon to the Grand Canyon's North Rim ran across this piece of steel. It saved thirty three miles, and almost nobody driving it now knows that.
The part that nearly went wrong
By 2012 a fire engine could not legally cross it.
Steel from 1924 does not last forever without help, and an inspection in 2012 found enough deterioration to force the bridge's load rating down. It went from twenty five tons to fourteen, and then down again to six. Six tons does not sound like a limit until you work out what it excludes: a fire engine, an ambulance of any size, and the truck that empties the bins.
That put the town in a genuinely hard position. The cheap answer to a hundred year old single lane truss is to replace it with a concrete deck and move on, and plenty of Utah communities took exactly that answer in the twentieth century, which is why this is the last one of its kind still carrying traffic. Rockville put the question to its residents instead, and about seventy four percent voted to restore rather than replace.
Then they had to pay for it. The town fundraised, and in 2017 the state legislature appropriated one hundred thousand dollars towards the work, which gave Rockville the match it needed to unlock the rest. For a town whose entire population would not fill a school assembly hall, that is a considerable piece of organising.
How they fixed it
New wood on top, the same steel underneath.
Work started in September 2018, with Wadsworth Brothers Construction building it, Lochner engineering it and the Utah Department of Transportation overseeing. The brief was awkward: raise the capacity enough to be useful again without turning a historic truss into a modern bridge wearing an old costume.
The answer was mostly weight. A glue laminated timber deck went on in place of the old one, which is lighter than concrete and leaves more of the rating available for whatever is driving over it. The steel stringers under the deck were replaced, the floor beams were strengthened, and four of the truss diagonals were swapped out in kind, meaning like for like rather than for something modern. The rest of the 1924 steel stayed exactly where it was.
The result took the rating back up to twenty five tons, which is where it started a century ago, and the bridge reopened in May 2019 with a ceremony that a fair proportion of the town turned out for. It is now doing the same job it was built to do, on the same alignment, with most of its original fabric.
There is a broader point in here for anyone weighing a historic property in this corridor. Old structures in Rockville do not survive because somebody is sentimental about them. They survive because a small number of people did the paperwork, went to the meetings, raised the money and turned up. The same is true of Grafton across the river, and of the townsite buildings on this side.
It is a road, not an exhibit. The bridge carries live traffic, one lane at a time, and the approach on the town side comes off the highway at an angle. If you are stopping to photograph it, park clear of the road on the town side and walk, rather than stopping on the deck. Local drivers use it every day and the sight lines are short.
Keep reading
More of Rockville on The Local.
The back road
Smithsonian Butte
Nine and a quarter miles of BLM road over the mesa, and one steep rutted climb.
Read the guideThe park
Driving into Zion
Five miles from the gate with no shuttle stop, and why February is the good month.
Read the guideThe shelf
Rockville, from a local
The quiet mile, the ceiling the town set itself, and the bridge out the back.
Read the pageQuick answers
The bridge, answered.
A steel Parker through truss bridge built in 1924 to carry Bridge Road over the Virgin River at Rockville, Utah. It is 217 feet long in a single span, twelve panels, one lane wide, and it is the only surviving bridge of its type still used for vehicular travel in Utah. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 4 August 1995.
Yes. It is an open public road and it carries daily traffic to the properties, farms and trailheads on the south side of the river, as well as everyone driving out to Grafton. It is single lane, so yield to anything already on the deck. After the 2018 and 2019 rehabilitation its load rating was restored to twenty five tons.
A 2012 inspection found enough deterioration to force the load rating down from twenty five tons to fourteen and then to six. At six tons the bridge could not legally carry a fire engine or the refuse truck, which made it a safety problem rather than just a heritage one. Rockville residents voted about seventy four percent in favour of rehabilitating it rather than replacing it, and a state appropriation of one hundred thousand dollars in 2017 helped fund the match.
Construction began in September 2018 and the bridge reopened in May 2019. The work replaced the deck with glue laminated timber, swapped the steel stringers, strengthened the floor beams and replaced four truss diagonals in kind, while leaving the rest of the 1924 steel in place. The result took the load rating back to twenty five tons.
For tourism. In the 1920s the grand loop route carrying visitors between Zion, Bryce Canyon and the Grand Canyon's North Rim was being assembled, and from 1924 to 1930 it ran across this bridge and over the mesa beyond it, cutting roughly thirty three miles off the drive between Zion and the North Rim. When the road network changed the bridge went back to being a local crossing, which is what it has been ever since.
On the town side, clear of the roadway, and then walk. The bridge is a live single lane road with short sight lines and an angled approach off State Route 9, so stopping on the deck to take a photograph is both unpopular and unsafe. Walking across and back takes only a few minutes and is a better look at the structure anyway.
One lane of steel, and a town that voted to keep it.
That vote tells you more about how Rockville works than any listing description will. Decisions here get made in a room at 43 East Main by people who all know each other, and they mostly come down on the side of keeping things as they are. If that appeals to you, it is worth knowing what else it means for a purchase.