I’ve driven, bicycled, and walked across the Northville Road bridge in Plymouth, Michigan along the Middle River Rouge for years.
As a teenager, I bicycled from my home to Cloverdale Dairy in downtown Plymouth for ice cream in the summer.
What fun memories!
In recent years, I’ve walked over the bridge dozens of times to look for birds on the west side of Wilcox Lake.
But it wasn’t until the past week I noticed an old-fashioned plaque with what appears to be copper printing on the west side of the bridge.
The plaque dates back to when the bridge was first built in 1921 as a State Reward Bridge. Another plaque on the east side of the bridge highlights work on the bridge in 1953.
According to BridgeHunter (a site which documents historic bridges), the Northville Road bridge is a 63-foot long concrete arch bridge last rehabilitated in 2000.
I was curious what it meant to be a State Reward Bridge; I had never heard of the phrase.
My research informed me it was because the bridge was improved in the early 20th century from a nine-foot width to a 16-foot width with state funds.
