This publication takes on the daunting task of writing based solely on thousands of pages of patent work collected from the United States Patent Office. The collected records focus on the historic bridgework that culminated during the first century of the office's inception. Fueled by the field of bridge engineering and its free enterprise setting in the nineteenth century, the Institute for the History of Technology and Industrial Archaeology at West Virginia University collected and poured through these documents for several years. This publication is the first public exposure to these patent records. The first half of the work is a series of essays discussing a diverse range of topics while the second half of the work contains illustrations and texts on various bridge designs recovered from the Patent Office.