It might be a bad choice of words to say that Delaware County is awash in old truss bridges, but we’ve certainly got our share of them. I’ve covered the ones in Yorktown and Mt. Pleasant Township before, yet there’s one nearby I tend to forget about until I’m actually crossing it. That’s the Abshire Bridge, a sturdy riveted Warren pony truss over Williams Creek in the quiet backroads of Salem Township.
The Abshire Bridge appears to have taken its name from Edward Abshire, a farmer who owned about 177 acres on these southern banks of Bell Creek during the 1880s1. In those days, the road didn’t cross Little Bell Creek, now known as Williams. Instead, it skirted its banks and met up with Honey Creek Pike in a series of awkward turns. In 1915, county commissioners solicited proposals for a series of bridges nearby named Moffett, Summers, and Abshire2.
Muncie’s Indiana Bridge Company won the contract for all three, with the Abshire Bridge expected to cost $2,6753. Said to be designed by S. Horace Weber, the bridge is 48.9 feet long and 14.1 feet wide4. Its Warren truss features a framework of equilateral triangles that distributes weight evenly while, as a pony truss, the travel surface passes along the bridge’s bottom chords that don’t connect by trusses with the top5.
The road served by the Abshire Bridge -once County Road 500 West and County Road 532 West in different places- was renamed Sunrise Road in 19916. Evidently, the bridge was rehabilitated in 19997. Today, it carries a concrete deck high above Williams Creek. Tucked away on the far southwestern edge of the countryside, it’s likely among Delaware County’s least-traveled rural crossings! Unless you live nearby, the Abshire Bridge is a place you might pass only if you’re truly out to wander.
Steel truss bridges like Abshire may not draw crowds or make the history books, but they’re part of the fabric that holds places like Delaware County together. For more than a century, its riveted steel has carried farmers, neighbors, and wanderers across Williams Creek by linking one stretch of countryside to another.
You don’t stumble upon the old Abshire Bridge unless you’re willing to drift off the main roads, but that’s exactly what makes it worth the trip.
Sources Cited
1 Griffing, B. N. (1887). Perry Township. An atlas of Delaware County, Indiana. map, Philadelphia, PA; Griffing, Gordon, & Company.
2 Bridges (1915, April 2). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 10.
3 Ind. Bridge Co. Gets Contracts (1915, April 17). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 8.
4 Abshire Bridge (n.d.). Indiana/Delaware County. Bridge Hunter. Web. Retrieved August 10, 2025.
5 Truss Bridges (n.d.). North Carolina Department of Transportation. Web. Retriebed August 10, 2025.
6 Legal Notices (1991, May 18). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 19.
7 (See footnote 4).
