WPA Stone Bridge--Morton County

Location:  From Richfield, 6 miles west on K-25 to curve, then 4 miles north.  From Elkhart, 10 miles north.

Photos Copyright Harland J. Schuster.  Please do not use without permission.

Morton County, in the southwest corner of the state, has no permanently flowing streams.  Yet, at 96 feet in length and 28 feet wide, here where you would least expect it, is located one of the longer stone arch bridges in the state.  With five arches, as far as I know, it has the most arches of any remaining stone arch bridge in Kansas.

The bridge was completed in 1939 as part of the Works Progress Administration or WPA.  The WPA was one of many programs of President Roosevelt's "New Deal" administration designed to help the nation recover from the Great Depression.  Between 1935 and 1941, this program provided work--and a pay check--for more than 8 1/2 million American workers who had lost their jobs due to the catastrophic economic conditions of the time.  Everything from outhouses to giant dams were constructed by the workers under this program.

2559 man-hours were spent constructing this stone bridge in Morton County, an area devastated in those days by drought and dust storms in addition the Great Depression.  It was during the worst of these years that it has been said from the Point of Rocks, on what is now the Cimarron Grasslands, you could look in all directions and see nothing green.  A true moon-like landscape created by drought of the 1930's and poor farming practices of the 1920's.  It was into this absolutely desolate land of desperate people that programs like the WPA provided a ray of hope.   While other federal programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps replanted and reclaimed the blown out farms, men working under the WPA built this impressive bridge.   Stone for the bridge was hauled to the site from far away Stanton County.  Due to its unique and historic properties, the bridge was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

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