A Journey to Minnesota's Oldest Standing Bridge

Occasionally I stray from Lake Minnetonka's shores to visit a friend whose property includes Minnesota's oldest standing bridge. The Point Douglas-St. Louis River Road Bridge. ( Also known as; " The Old Stone Arch Bridge").
It is not a large bridge, it can hardly accomodate two people walking, although a formal descriptionstates that it is 17feet wide and 12 feet high. It is slowly crumbling from tree roots and over growth. This bridge was built in the 186Os, but was probably not the first bridge on the site. The bridge was part of a series of frontier roads pitched as "Military Roads" in 1850 by Henry Hastings Sibley. Sold as miltary purpose roads, they were probably used more often by early settlers of the Minnesota Territory.
The bridge crosses Brown's Creek, which flows east into the St. Croix River.