Skip to main content

Redirect ItemDetail

The link that you are referencing is outdated!
If the item currently exists in our website, it is displayed below. If not, the link that you are referencing is no longer valid and no longer exists on our website. We will have some collections moved in the coming months. See what's coming in updates for Signature Collections or Digital WHILBR Collections on ContentDM.
Lock 38 area, bridge missing from flood; train bridge in background

This photograph must have been taken at some point after the 1889 flood as it shows only the piers for the second vehicle bridge that had been built in 1871 to replace the first bridge that had been destroyed in the Civil War. That bridge would be replaced with a third bridge that would survive until the 1936 flood. Largest of all floods in the Potomac Valley to date, the 1936 flood also took out the lockhouse seen here between the towpath and the river.