Civil War Era Aquia Creek & Fredericksburgh Bridge

Current 1923 bridge at this site: (Bridge Hunter, Satellite)

This railroad became part of Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac, which is now part of CSX.

It continues to amaze me what our forefathers could build with wood: grain elevators; coal docks, towers, and tipples; and, of course, bridges.

Bob Freitag shared
Potomac Creek Bridge, Aquia Creek & Fredericksburgh Railroad, perspective view, April 12, 1863 - photo by Andrew Russell
[Library of Congress: LC-DIG-ppmsca-11688]

Photo from LOT 11486-H, no. 8 [P&P]

Huntington, cropped
Potomac Creek Bridge across the Potomac Creek, Stafford County, Virginia.

TourStaffordVA, 2x
“Beanpoles and cornstalks,” is what President Abraham Lincoln called the once 80-foot-high, 400-foot-long Potomac Creek Bridge when he crossed it in 1862.  Although the bridge no longer stands today, you can visit the the stone blocks  of the south abutment and the commemorative marker of this once impressive historic structure.
[The LoC documentation on the handwritten notes below noted that they were signed by HH. Herman Haupt was the engineer that supervised building this first of four bridges built during the Civil War. It was built in nine days during May, 1862.]

Screenshot

I'm old enough to have been taught cursive writing, but I gave up reading this after the first paragraph.

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