Quick City Bridge, Spanning Big Creet at County Road 594, Quick City, Johnson County, MO

Significance: Between the early 1880s, when trusses superseded bowstrings, and the 1920s, when riveted connections replaced pinned, the pin-connected Pratt truss was the metal structure of choice for medium- and long-span wagon bridges in Missouri. Virtually all of the major regional fabricators manufactured Pratt trusses and marketed them extensively to Missouri's counties in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As a result, thousands of Pratt trusses were built across the state, and many remain in place today. Most extend less than 120 feet; several have spans greater than 150 feet. Only two 200-foot pinned Pratts are known to remain in Missouri, however: the Quick City Bridge in Johnson County and the Frenchman's Bluff Bridge in Lincoln County. Built at a time in which pin-connected trusses were considered an anachronism, the Quick City Bridge is significant as one of the longest examples in Missouri of this mainstay structural type.
Survey number: HAER MO-101
Building/structure dates: 1929 Initial Construction