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Location: 33.47S, 23.57W |
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Location: 33.47S, 23.35W |
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Location: 33.47S, 23.11W |
The Last Bridge is the easternmost bridge built by the kings of Arnor upon the Great East Road. It marks the border between the barrens of the Lone-lands and the Trollshaws in the shadow of the Misty Mountains, where lies Rivendell, refuge of Elrond Halfelven.
As Strider led Frodo Baggins and his companions to Rivendell they crossed the Last Bridge, and there Strider discovered a beryl – an Elf-stone, or more specifically, an emerald – left there as a sign that friends had passed that way. Indeed, the mighty Elf-lord Glorfindel had left the stone, and later aided in the rescue of Frodo from the Nazg�l at the Ford of Bruinen.
Players of The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™ will want to visit this landmark from the books, for more than just a bridge might be found there. . .
Last Bridge
Quick Facts
The Bridge of Mitheithel
The old stone bridge that carried the East-West Road over the River Mitheithel, about a hundred miles east of Weathertop. Its three arches crossed the wide river at the bottom of a valley, and to the east the land rose again into the wooded hills of the Trollshaws, in which Bilbo and his companions encountered an unfriendly trio of trolls. Indeed, there is an oblique reference to an ancient stone bridge in The Hobbit that seems to be a reference to the Last Bridge.
No record of its builders survives, but it was most likely constructed by the Dúnedain of Arnor, or perhaps of the later kingdom of Rhudaur, in which it lay. There was no other means of crossing the river for hundreds of miles to the north, and so the Bridge had great strategic value. In the War of the Ring, three Black Riders attempted to hold it against Aragorn and the hobbits on their journey to Rivendell. Their plan was foiled by Glorfindel, who drove them away and left his token, a green beryl, on the Bridge.
