Bridge to the Past

Before and After.

Did you ever have that feeling where you’re pretty sure something is missing? I had it recently, when I drove through a neighborhood I hadn’t visited in a long, long time. It took me a minute to unravel, but what was missing was a bridge. It was just two lanes across a little creek, but the old span had been replaced, and it changed everything.

Central Ohio was beginning a growth spurt about the same time I moved away in the late 1980s. At the time, I knew there would be some changes, but I had no idea what it would look like or what would be lost. One of the things I remember struggling with during visits in subsequent years was the change to the roadways. Roads that had been two-ish lanes of country blacktop in my youth were now much wider “parkways” with sidewalks and traffic circles. As the population grew, planners and engineers reimagined the little country roads and corn fields and gave us a sprawling exurb. As you can imagine, those bigger roads are struggling to keep up with the growth in traffic. (Since moving back a couple of years ago, I’m still trying to figure out how to best get where I want to go!)

One of the other hurdles to progress in that period was bridges. Two lane through-truss bridges were the go-to civil engineering tool of the early 1900s, and Ohio built a whole bunch of them. Two-thirds of a century later, a lot of them were still in use, but their days were numbered. The enclosed design limited height and width of vehicles, and the weight capacity was grossly inadequate for modern transportation needs, so down they came. Most of them were replaced with bigger steel and concrete beam type bridges with no overhead superstructure. While the new bridges are utilitarian, they have next to zero aesthetics. (Which is probably exactly what people said when the old wooden covered bridges were replaced.)

In order to recall, recollect, and honor some of the bridges, I recently went for a trip around the interwebs looking for the old spans of Franklin and Delaware counties. While I couldn’t find an image of the missing bridge, here is a sampling of what I see in my mind’s eye.

If you want to take a similar journey, try bridgehunter.com and www.historicaerials.com.

The Home Road Bridge over the Scioto River.

Powell Road crossing the Olentangy River.

Hayden Run Bridge over the Scioto with the support piers for the new bridge in place.