This old bridge silently crosses the flint river but the road leading to it from the west is gone. It is located near Burt Road in Taymouth Township between Birch Run and Burt, on the east side was of the river was the town of Morseville. At its peak in the 1880’s and 90’s, it had a hotel, three saloons, a church, two general stores, and a mill that farmers would travel for miles to have their grain milled. The town was a popular stop for the stagecoaches traveling from Saginaw to Flushing. A bridge was built across the Flint River for access to the town from the west side of the river.
In the 1850’s Nathaniel Morse purchased the land along the Flint River from the Federal Government for $1.25 an acre after it had acquired it from a treaty signed by Lewis Cass with the Native Americans who lived along the river. Nathanel’s son James Morse plated the town of Morseville in 1886, but soon after, the Saginaw Cincinnati and Mackinaw Railroad built tracks to flushing and passed a few miles to the west of Morseville. Wellington Burt soon built the town of Burt along the tracks. James Morse did all he could to get the train to pass through his town of Morseville, but I am thinking Wellington Burt was a powerful well-connected lumber baron that had a lot more influence than James Morse did. A few years after the tracks bypast the town, another set of train tracks went from Saginaw to Birch Run, which sealed the fate of the town of Moresville. Now all that remains are some houses and that wonderful old bridge over the Flint River.
On April 5th 1990 the bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Recently a new bridge was built further down the river, and the original one was left abandoned. So when your driving over the new bridge, and you see the old steel truss bridge that looks like it goes to nowhere, hopefully you will remember the town of Morseville.
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