After the great fire of 1856 destroyed the wooden covered bridge carrying Main Street traffic across Cattaraugus Creek, another one was erected. Damaged by a flood in 1861 and carried downstream to a point near the Gowanda Union School, it was salvaged, moved back and rebuilt. The single-span structure was 168 feet long and rested atop stone abutments on opposite banks of the creek. By then more than 30 years old, natural decay had taken its toll on the bridge. By 1888, the question of its repair or replacement reached a crescendo, fueled largely by columns in the Gowanda Herald written by its editor, a tough 54-year-old Civil War veteran named James Kavanaugh.

     Because different townships lay at either end of the bridge, responsibility for its maintenance was shared equally by the towns of Collins and Persia. This meant that the towns had to agree on a course of action. The three highway commissioners in Persia favored replacing the old bridge with a new one, while the Collins commissioner thought the wooden bridge could be repaired. The matter was to be settled by a referee named Manley C. Green of Buffalo, who was appointed by the Supreme Court of Erie County on Sept. 3, 1888 to hear testimony in the case. After considerable delay, the hearing began at the law office of Irving R. Leonard in Gowanda on Nov. 23, 1888.

     Civil engineers, railroad bridge inspectors and building contractors testified in the matter. Kavanaugh weighed in with his editorial views while reporting on the case. The Herald compared the design of the old bridge to that of Noah’s Ark, writing that “the old, rotten, worm-eaten structure is liable to fall into the seething waters of the Cattaraugus at any moment.”

     By the following April, the bridge had been condemned as unsafe. It was out of plumb and sagging, and showed considerable decay. Finally, Green ruled on April 25, 1889 that a new bridge would be built. The decision brought great rejoicing from the Herald, which published the referee’s report in its May 3 edition. The old bridge was to be sold at auction on May 18 and the high bidder would have 20 days to remove it after the winning bid of $101 and had the wooden structure down before the end of July. Meanwhile, proposals for building a new iron bridge were received from eight bridge companies whose agents were present at the bid opening on May 15. The Groton Bridge Company of Groton, NY was the low bidder at $7,795. Later, the commissioners decided to build a wider, heavier bridge with new abutments, increasing its cost to around $11,000. Target date for opening of the new bridge was Sept. 1, 1889. However, this date would not be met.

     Gowanda contractor Silas Vinton completed the new abutments on Sept. 20, but then progress seemed to grind to a halt. Rainy weather and a delay in receiving shipments of iron pushed the date back to late autumn. The timetable stated in the contract would have put its completion date at about Oct. 10. A week later, an impatient James Kavanaugh aired his frustration with the delay by publishing excerpts from the contract with the Groton Bridge Co. in order to hasten the bridge’s completion. He called upon the highway commissioners from both towns to prevail upon Groton Bridge to wrap up the job.

     Finally, the Herald reported on Dec. 9 that a temporary bridge across the creek had been removed one week earlier and the new iron bridge was now open for travel. It was a Pratt truss bridge with seven-foot wooden sidewalks which the paper called “a thing of beauty.” The only criticism at this point was that the bridge was adorned with extravagant ornaments at a cost of “twenty seven cents per dozen.” The Herald asked the bridge builders to replace them with something less expensive.

     Anyone approaching 50 years of age or older should have vivid memories of the iron bridge, which served the traveling public for 73 years before being declared unsafe in 1962. In anticipation of its replacement, a second crossing on the new Aldrich Street Extension was completed two years earlier. The iron bridge, which had been closed to truck traffic for some time, was removed and replaced by the modern single-span concrete structure that opened to traffic in 1963.

(Photos courtesy of the Gowanda Area Historical Society)