Photo of men standing on Warren Truss Bridge

This Photograph shows eight men standing on one of the rails of a Warren Truss Highway Bridge which appears to rest close to the ground on a hillside. A broken-down fence can be seen nearby.

A truss is an assembly of beams and struts together designed to distribute weight evenly in an object and help it carry more weight, allowing for efficient use of materials in bridge construction. The Warren Truss bridge design was first patented by British engineer James Warren in 1848, alongside Willoughby Monzani. Warren’s truss design has the struts and beams arranged into the shape of equilateral triangles, which created some of the most efficient weight distribution for a truss. Many bridges were thus built with this type of design in mind throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly on railroad bridges. Sometimes additional vertical beams are placed in the center of each triangle to support the top beam.

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