You will be pleased to note that Kyle Burch's pictures of the masonry stone abutments he found at the Beale Iron Bridge site on Redbank Creek in Leflore County, OK are now available for viewing again at bealewagonroad.com.

Also you will see the Historically Significant discovery of the 1859 "Bridge Signs" that Kyle also found near the site which prove the relevance and relationships previously developed among Lt. Edward F. Beale's Wagon Road to the Pacific, Squire Whipple's six Iron Bridges built on the BWR in Indian Territory in 1859 and John W. Murphy, Pencoyd Iron Works' bridge engineer for A. & P. Roberts & Co. of Philadelphia. A recent (2020) book noted previously documents that Murphy designed and Pencoyd fabricated the six iron bridges for the U. S. Government.

What three associates of mine from Upstate New York, where over a hundred similar Whipple Bridges were built in the mid-1800's, and I have been working on for the past three months is (1) developing the credentials of John W. Murphy to be Pencoyd's bridge engineer for the BWR project, (2) to determine the importance that Philadelphia's Iron Works industry placed on such a national road building project to the Pacific in 1859-61, and (3) how to best preserve the Holy Grail cast iron bridge sign bars found buried near the site for 160 years!

What we have found is almost as amazing to us as Kyle's discovery. J. W. Murphy and A. & P. Roberts used sterographic photography (to provide visual depth perception) of one of Murphy's new iron bridges to advertise their iron bridge building capabilities to Eastern Railroad Companies in early 1861. AND THEY CITED THEIR CONSTRUCTION OF THE SIX IRON BRIDGES FOR THE U.S. GOVERNMENT'S BEALE WAGON ROAD TO THE PACIFIC in the same business ads as an example of their national accomplishments. Jim Stewart of Churchville, NY, made this dramatic discovery.

At the same time, President-elect Lincoln stopped his Inauguration railway caravan at Philadelphia on Feb. 22, 1861 to address the nation on Washington's birthday at Independence Hall, only two blocks from the Headquarters of A. & P. Roberts & Co. and John W. Forney's (publisher) The Philadelphia Press (re: Wanderer/John Russell Young). As noted previously, Forney's upcoming Washington, D.C. newspaper became the Voice of the Lincoln Administration during the Civil War to come.

The artifacts that Kyle Burch of Spiro, OK found in his "back yard" were considered a national treasure for a brief period of time in early 1861. But then the Civil War came, and we soon forgot almost everything not paid for in American blood.