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Delaware » Christiana Hundred » North Along Red Clay Creek » Wooddale Covered Bridge

Wooddale Covered Bridge

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c. 1860. Scheduled for rebuilding. Foxhill Ln. over Red Clay Creek, north of Lancaster Pike (DE 48)
  • Wooddale Covered Bridge (Delaware Division of Historical & Cultural Affairs, Dover, Del.)

The fifty-four-foot, Ithiel Town wooden lattice truss bridge was reinforced with steel Ibeams in 1969. It occupies a steep, wooded valley where Red Clay Creek makes a hairpin turn and is twice crossed by the Wilmington and Western Railroad (blasted through an adjacent ridge in 1871–1872, a cut so narrow that fast trains risked scraping against the sides). A station was built near the bridge and Wooddale became popular with picnickers. North of the bridge are traces of Delaware Iron Works (active 1814–c. 1890), a sheet-iron rolling mill operated by Philadelphia entrepreneur Alan Wood. A village was centered at Wooddale in the 1890s but disappeared after the last factory, a paper mill, burned in 1918. Of the Red Clay Creek's thirteen bridges shown on an 1868 map, only Wooddale and its near-twin at Ashland (CH35) survived to 2003, when the former was destroyed by the record flood. It is scheduled for rebuilding.

Writing Credits

Author: 
W. Barksdale Maynard
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Data

What's Nearby

Hoopes Reservoir Dam (Old Mill Stream Dam)
Brandywine Springs Park
Mt. Cuba
Marbrook Elementary School
Greenbank Mill

Citation

W. Barksdale Maynard, "Wooddale Covered Bridge", [Wilmington, Delaware], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/DE-01-CH32.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of Delaware

Buildings of Delaware, W. Barksdale Maynard. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008, 78-78.

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