Leather River Bridge

Leather River Bridge is a Municipal Heritage Property located within the Rural Municipality of Connaught No. 457, approximately 22 km northwest of the Town of Tisdale. The property features a 1913 steel truss bridge spanning the Leather River.

The heritage value of the Leather River Bridge lies in its status as the oldest bridge within the municipality. It was constructed in 1913 from a plan provided by the Dominion Bridge Company. The bridge has been in continual use since that time.

The heritage value of the property also lies in its technology. Representative of the new steel truss, the bridge is an example of a technology that revolutionized bridge construction which displaced the wood and wrought-iron truss construction during the late-nineteenth century. The Leather River Bridge is an example of a pony truss, a common type of steel truss construction. This type of truss lacked overhead top chords due to the short height of the parallel chords along the sides of the bridge. This style was commonly used for short, light traffic bridges of the period. The Leather River Bridge represents an important technological step in Saskatchewan bridge construction before the large-scale application of reinforced-concrete bridges in the 1930s.

Source:

Rural Municipality of Connaught No. 457 Bylaw 7-87.

The heritage value of the Leather River Bridge resides in the following character-defining elements:

-those elements that reflect the property’s technology, such as the pony truss and its steel infrastructure;

-those elements that reflect its status as the oldest bridge in the community, such as its position on its original location.