On May 15th of this year, we met with Calhoun County Parks Coordinator, Luke Siefken, at the Calhoun County Historic Bridge Park in Michigan. Siefken and Lucy Hough (Assistant Director Community Development) have established a maintenance schedule for the five historic bridges in the park, and Siefken shared this with us during our visit at the Historic Bridge Park. We finished our tour of the five bridges at the Charlotte Highway Bridge (Centerline Bridge) designed by Buckeye Bridge Works and built by H. P. Hepburn Engr. & Contr, Cleveland, Ohio, in 1886. This was the last historic bridge that the restoration crew (Rob Denniston, Wayne Conklin and I) restored, and it was erected in 2007 at the entrance, spanning the road that leads into the park. The Charlotte Highway Bridge would complete the concept for the Historic Bridge Park as envisioned by Dennis Randolph, Managing Director of the Calhoun County Road Commission at the time.
During our tour of the park with Siefken, it was clear that he was very attentive to what the bridges needed for good maintenance, incorporating some of the recommendations I had made in an earlier maintenance plan. We also reviewed the “bridge coating system,” which refers to the applied and cured multi-layer paint application, a coating system Michigan’s Department of Transportation was using at the time. Components of this coating system are primer, intermediate coat, and topcoat; the bridges that received this paint coating appear to be still in good condition.
Siefken and Hough, along with Doug Ferrall (Assistant County Administrator), have shown an interest in learning about the preservation processes used in restoring the five historic bridges. Ferrall and Siefken attended a rivet demonstration at Lansing Community College’s West Campus, where they were introduced to the Boyer field rivet hammer and had an opportunity to drive rivets with the hammer. The Boyer field rivet hammer was used extensively for the replication of historic bridge members during the restoration process.
Hough assisted with and attended a 2025 presentation I did for the Marshall Public Library about the restoration work for the bridges of the Historic Bridge Park.
Ferrall and Hough have been promoting the preservation work done on the five historic riveted truss bridges in the Calhoun County Historic Bridge Park and educating the public on the value of this exceptional park, one of the few in the USA where rare historic metal truss bridges are exhibited.
