Hiltons Gap - Holston River Bridge , Hiltons, VA

Tucked into a quiet, meandering bend in the North Fork Holston River was the Hiltons Gap - Holston River Bridge, on the south end of Hiltons, Virginia in Scott County, VA.

According to federal highway records, the Bristol Highway from Gate City to Bristol was originally signed in 1926 as U.S. Highway 411. When improvements were made to the route, this new Holston River North Fork steel through truss bridge at Hiltons Gap was built in 1930, downriver from the first Bristol Highway bridge location in an upper bend off Lunsford Mill Road. With the new bridge on the other end of Lunsford Mill Road came a new route number: U.S. 421, which replaced 411 in 1932 and U.S. Highway 58 co-signed with 421 the next year.

The route and the bridge is on the original Daniel Boone Trail, one of which came down the valley from the northeast, headed to Cumberland Gap and up to the Kentucky River to what is now Boonesborough, KY.

This riveted Warren through truss bridge was built by the Roanoke Iron and Bridge Works (RIBW) Company of Roanoke, Virginia, a business that was probably better known for its work in penal systems. According to a brochure, the company touts its many successful years of building "fabricated tool-resisting and open hearth steel equipment for federal, state, municipal and county jails, prisons, prison camps and police stations" since 1900. The brochure mentions that RIBW supplied equipment to jails in Wise, Buchanan, and Washington Counties, VA; jails in Greene, Knox, and Sullivan Counties, TN, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County jail in North Carolina and the Women's Prison building at the Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville, among other facilities.

Built in cooperation with the Virginia State Highway Commission, the entire bridge with approaches was 248

feet.  The single-span Pratt-style through truss span was 143 feet long and despite a vertical clearance of 13.6 feet above the deck, the upper cross bars were hit several times by passing vehicles. Despite its historical context, the bridge was dismantled and replaced with a two-span steel stringer bridge in 2013, thereby erasing the history of the last modern steel truss bridge located on the Daniel Boone Trail from upper East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia.

Roanoke Iron and Bridge Works built several other bridges, including the five-span Carico Bridge across the New River near Galax in Grayson County, Virginia. That bridge was torn down and replaced in 2011. Other RIBW bridges that survive are on U.S. 11 over the Shenandoah River at Mount Jackson, Virginia; on County Road 644 over Colliers Creek near Lexington, Virginia; and on the old Midland Trail over the Dunlap Creek west of Covington, Virginia.

The Roanoke Iron and Bridge Works Company filed for bankruptcy in the late 1980's and its assets eventually disbursed. The company that assumed some of those assets is still in business today, supplying jail and prison systems with iron works geared to security.