Set east of Old Washington in Guernsey County, Ohio, the Salt Fork S Bridge is one of the surviving masonry crossings of the old National Road. Built in 1828, it carried the National Road, later U.S. Route 40, over Salt Fork Creek on a 40-foot stone arch. Like several similar bridges built in Ohio and Pennsylvania, its arch was set perpendicular to the stream while the roadway curved on either side, creating the distinctive S-shaped alignment.
The form was practical rather than decorative. Built of cut stone laid in substantial courses, with an original brick floor, the bridge’s curves eased the approaches, shortened the arch needed to cross the creek, avoided steeper grades, and helped protect the backfill from erosion. It remains a small but revealing example of the engineering choices that shaped overland travel through eastern Ohio in the early 19th century.
The Salt Fork S Bridge was spared when U.S. Route 40 was realigned in 1932. Four years later, the Ohio Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution persuaded the Ohio Highway Department to route traffic around the old crossing rather than replace it, preserving one of the National Road’s early stone bridges. In 1965, it was designated a National Historic Landmark, and the structure was rehabilitated in 2005.
