Palm Tree Road over the Sheboygan River

Summary

Palm Tree Road Bridge
Palm Tree Road over the Sheboygan River, Town of Marshfield, Fond du Lac County
Contractor: Alphonse Halter
Date of Construction: 1901

The handsome nine-arch, fieldstone bridge across the Sheboygan River in the Town of Marshfield was erected in 1901. It replaced a circa 1874, wooden fabrication that had opened up the entire area south of the river to businesses in the village of St. Cloud, immediately to the north.

The bridge was constructed by Alphonse Halter, an immigrant from Switzerland who arrived in the United States in 1882. Identified in federal census records as a mason in the early years of the twentieth century, Halter was an active contractor in the area before moving to a farm in the Town of Fond du Lac in 1902. Although Halter apparently continued working as a mason for several years, subsequent census records identified him as a farmer. Halter died in 1934, the victim of an automobile accident.

Halter’s fabrication has nine arches, the most of any stone bridge in Wisconsin today. Bridge historians Jeffrey Hess and Robert M. Frame, III, observed that the structure “…also features an almost perfect Roman profile. Although the arches are not quite semicircular, they conform to the classic Roman pattern: an uneven number, with the largest in the center, flanked by paired spans decreasing in size and separated by piers about one-third the width of the adjoining spans.” Additionally did early Wisconsin historic preservation advocate, Richard W.E. Perrin, observe in his 1962 book, Wisconsin Buildings: A Survey of Pioneer Architecture, 1835-1870, that the bridge’s “…arches are of particularly good proportion and the entire structure has a distinctly architectural feeling.”

Stone arch bridges with four or more spans are a rarity in Wisconsin. Even more rare is the Palm Tree Road Bridge with its nine spans. Indeed, that number of spans, three more than the next closest structures in the state, coupled with its classic Roman character, make it a unique and significant artifact in Wisconsin, as well as the Town of Marshfield. The bridge continued to carry traffic until 2012, when it was closed to vehicular traffic in order to help promote its preservation. The Palm Tree Road Bridge is used today only by pedestrians, bicycles and small recreational vehicles.

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