Award of Excellence – Burnside Bridge – Public Works/Infrastructure

Award Winning Work

The 2017 Project of the Year was awarded to The Witmer Group for their project Burnside Bridge. The Keystone Chapter congratulates The Witmer Group., Mount Joy, for their Excellence Award submittal of this project in the Public Works/Infrastructure category. The Witmer Group, through Witmer Restoration, Inc., undertook the comprehensive restoration of the Burnside Bridge – built in 1836 – located at the Antietam National Battlefield in Sharpsburg, Maryland. Under the pressure of the National Park Service’s highest-quality standards, Witmer was bound to dismantle, repair, prep and re-assemble a national historical landmark so that the final product was virtually indiscernible from the original. They devised an innovative system of portioning the bridge into sections, tracing each stone onto poly sheets and assigning a number to each stone. A replica map was made to place extracted stones while the under-layer work was completed. The Witmer team’s skills, innovation and determination were integral in a successful restoration of this Civil War era treasure.