Ohio Canal Greenway Trail Bridge

Recently I took off down the highway with a vague intention of working toward Buckeye Lake. Or maybe Zanesville, where I distinctly remembered there being some pretty cool bridges. Or maybe even further, see if I could get a historic river crossing at the border with either PA or WV. Like I said, very vague intentions. I felt I would know what I was looking for when I saw it.

Turns out, I did. "Know Thyself," said some foreign dead guy.

Cruising past an exit, I saw a covered bridge at the edge of a farm field. It was right next to a modern bridge, and I thought to myself, "Perfect! I can do a post about the passage of time, and how you can't really see the progress like this anywhere."

No idea why, but I find that metal cap on the concrete fascinating.

As it turns out, the covered bridge was just over 20 years old, built as part of a rail right-of-way-to-trail project. It was still a pretty neat find, since I had to find my way back to it from the next exit. My advanced "It's back that way and I just need to find a road going that way" methods took me along Buckeye Lake and along Canal Road in Millersport--watch this space for a couple posts stemming from that adventure.

In this shot, you can see the canal on the far left, the old right of way in the center, and the field on the right. It's interesting, because you have the reason for transportation on the right--the fields have been here as long as American settlers. The canals came to move the goods grown in those fields. Canals in turn were replaced by the faster and more efficient railroads, which used the already defined and built-up right of ways of the canals in many places.

Railroads were largely replaced by the more flexible trucks, leading to more of this type of thing popping up across streams and rivers across the state. Of course, with private sector tax breaks and bailouts largely replacing infrastructure spending, there's no telling how much longer these bridges will actually be around.

Not all state money is thrown away for private gain, however--clearly the Department of Natural Resources replaced the old rail bridge with something much more hiker friendly, to ensure people can make use of their heritage in a meaningful way.

It's not hard to imagine the bridge that once spanned the gap between these substantial supports. I appreciate the fact the original structure was left in place despite the bridge not needing nearly the strength provided. The effect is two-fold: no wasted resources tearing up the existing stone and putting in new works, and you have a piece of history preserved.

The end result is pretty spiffy. It may not be an 1800's covered bridge but it does have the same simple elegance. The sun playing through the trusses was something to see, and I don't think I was quite able to capture it here as well as I'd hoped--you'll just have to check it out for yourself.

Discover Bridge, Broad Street Columbus over the Scioto River

It took Cincinnati almost 60 years to collectively decide they even needed the Roebling Bridge to be built. A big part of that was simply being unable to build a bridge tall enough to let steam ships cruise under--the Scioto didn't present this problem, and Columbus began bridging it early. Four years after Columbus was officially founded, Lucas Sullivant built a toll bridge on the same general site as the current bridge.

Not the Sullivant toll bridge, clearly.

As it turned out, the Scioto was extremely hard to bridge because it kept flooding. As the plaque a few photos down will tell you, at least 6 bridges have spanned this spot, as well as others in different places throughout the city. It took quite a while to find one that would stick around, but in 1918 work began on the span that would bridge Broad Street until 1990.

A lot was done to that 1918 bridge, including taking out streetcar track after WWII and building in telephone cables under the sidewalks. Between that, increased vehicle traffic (compare the number of cars on the road when they designed the damn thing with the number of cars on the road today for an unscientific assessment), and general wear-and-tear on lowest-bidder construction it was time for a new bridge for a new century.

I'm a fan of private industry, but I can't help but notice bridges didn't stick around longer than a few years until the government took the wheel--probably a coincidence, but still interesting to note. What role does protecting ROI (return on investment) play in projects like this? Just food for thought as we privatize everything from prisons to highways...

I'm a huge fan of bridges, and dams, and things in general that let us grab Mother Nature by the proverbial shoulder and say, "No, no I'm not ok with this--we're going to compromise right now!" It's a bonus when they can look as graceful as this bridge does, with the simple lines and comforting stability. Crossing on foot, I felt no movement from the bridge even when the occasional heavy truck drove by--not something I'm used to.

I was fairly impressed by how clean and spacious the riverwalk is beneath the bridge--and the good lighting and lack of sneaky alcoves means things are likely to stay that way with little evidence. Someone at the architect's firm was thinking ahead.

Simple arches connected to simple columns, resting on simple islands. Just like suspension bridges are just a roadway hanging from ropes strung over towers. The simplest ideas are often the best.

The Discovery Bridge is so named to celebrate Christopher Columbus's discovery of America. Given the absolute horror this unleashed on the people of the Caribbean, South America, North America, and Africa it's debatable just how much we should celebrate such a thing.

It was getting quite chilly as the sun kept going down, and the lighting made photography challenging. The current plan for the downtown stretch of the Scioto is to narrow the river to improve water movement and build more green space along the banks. Based on the smell by the river, even in the cold, I say more moving water is a good thing--but that's exactly how so many bridges were swept away. A tricky balance, and a worthy challenge.

We were getting ready to head out to our nice warm car and enjoy a hot meal someone else cooked, and this pile of trash and rags caught my eye. And it dawned on me that someone had stashed their bed here, in possibly the best place to avoid the wind. It was so incongruent with the effort the city clearly makes to keep things "pleasant" down by the river.

So in closing, I think it's safe to say we've got the whole "build beautiful strong things" down cold as a species. Maybe it's time to take on some other challenges?

Sources:

Bridge Hunter Covered Bridge

Bridge Hunter Second Bridge

Bridge Hunter Previous Bridge

National Park Service Historical Engineering Record

If You Liked This:

Cincinnati's Roebling Suspension Bridge

Hoover Dam Near Westerville, OH

Roebling Suspension Bridge--Cincinnati, OH

So everyone knows the Brooklyn Bridge, and how it was designed by John A Roebling. But where did Roebling get the experience to win such a bid? Well, in Cincinnati. Among other places.

One of the spiffy things about Cincinnati's location is how it's directly across the river from a river. This puts the Queen City at a wonderful cross roads--traffic up the Ohio, down the Ohio, from the interior of Kentucky, the interior of Ohio. Cincinnati was briefly considered as a replacement national capital after the British sacked DC during the War of 1812, and the fact it was smack-dab in the middle of all these key waterways (while still being out of range of Royal Marine expeditionary forces) was a big reason.

But all that river traffic was even worse than the current trainwreck that I-75 becomes two-to-four times a day now. Have you seen the steamboats of the mid 1800's? We're not talking a Honda Civic--we're talking a four story building on it's side, getting in the way of everything else that may want to cross the river. That made traffic between Ohio and Kentucky difficult--sure, you could ferry goods and people, but it just added to the congestion in a major way. Not to mention you couldn't always depend on the river to be high enough, or low enough, you needed a place to land those ferries...there are reasons we build bridges, people.

So starting in 1846 (I'm pulling these dates and names from Wikipedia, for the record--as much as I love history I suck at memorizing the details), the Covington and Cincinnati Bridge Company incorporated and called up John Roebling, who'd already designed and supervised the construction of several impressive spans around the country. It wasn't until 1856 that construction actually began--everything from lobbying against the bridge by the ferry operators to slow funding kept things at a glacial pace. Construction kept up at the same rate--between weather, funding, and health issues of key members of the Bridge Company work only took place during maybe a year and a half out of these 4 years.

The Civil War hit, halting construction. However, during the course of building defenses the Union Army built a pontoon bridge across the Ohio--proving to the community that a bridge might be a pretty good idea, after all. This solved the funding problems, and besides an invasion scare construction resumed in 1863. By 1866 the bridge was completed, paving the way for other spans across the Ohio River (see my banner photo).