Commercial Street Bridge, Spanning Purgatoire River on Commercial Street, Trinidad, Las Animas County, CO

Significance: After the turn of the century, the preferred alternative to the steel truss for short-span vehicular bridges was generally considered to the concrete arch. More solid under traffic and better resistant to flooding, it was also valued as more aesthetically refined than the starkly functional truss. This bridge is a direct representation of that trend in Colorado. It is associated with two pivotal figures in bridge technology, James March and Daniel Luten, and is the only bridge in Colorado known to have been built by Marsh's company. A regionally important crossing of the Purgatoire River, it is one of Colorado's most technologically significant spans.
Survey number: HAER CO-53
Building/structure dates: 1905 Initial Construction