Longest Simple Truss Bridge, This is the Brookport Bridge over the Ohio River, one of the longest simple truss spans in existence. It may be one of the longest simple truss spans ever built, at least in the first half of the 20th Century. Video Below I was taking photos down by the river at […]
Reminder: Today is your last day to submit your entries to the 2022 Bridgehunter Awards. Especially attractive is the category Best Bridge Photo. Deadline is December 1st at 12:00pm Berlin Time, 5:00am Chicago Time. To submit your entries, click on the link below:
Like in the States, Japan has a wide selection of unusual truss bridges, many of which are easy to find as they have been preserved for future generations as being part of the Japanese culture, something that leaves a lot to be desired when looking at how we treat our historic structures in the USA in general.
This is one of them. It’s a deck truss built using a Kingpost design. The connections are welded. Yet the weirdest part of this bridge is that the truss chord is outrigged, meaning it makes a double reversal curve going outwards towards the center of the two-panel truss span. Normally for truss bridges, we have a truss chord with additional outriggers on the vertical beams, like in the example presented by Chester Gehman of a bridge at Sharon Station, Connecticut.
According to Bridge Trek, the Kingpost deck truss span carries a railroad and can be found in the Yamagata Perfecture in Japan. You can find more pics of this bridge by clicking here. What is unknown is when and where it was built. Most likely because of welded connections that were introduced at the turn of the century, it was built over a century ago. The question is who?
And this is where your expertise is in. You know what to do. 🙂
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Reminder:
Two more days to submit your entries for the 2022 Bridgehunter Awards. You have between now and December 1st at 12:00pm noon Berlin Time. Click here: ( https://bridgehunterschronicles.wordpress.com/the-othmar-h-ammann-awards/ ) to submit your entries. Remember: Lifetime Achievement and Best Bridge Photos are in high demand. So submit your entries for those two today if you have them.
This week’s Pic of the Week takes us back to 2010 and to Iowa. Specifically, to Wapsipinicon State Park on the banks of the river bearing the same name. I visited this park twice, in 2010 and again in 2011. The park has a lot of beautiful hills, much of it overlooking the town of Anamosa. But even more amazing are the number of bridges that the park has, both on the grounds but also outside the park grounds but only a hundred feet away.
This is one of the bridges located within the park itself. It’s one of two stone arch bridges featuring a trapezoidal railing. The 40-foot bridge was built by convicts of the Anamosa State Penitentiary in 1925 as they were sentenced to do hard labor. It spans Dutch Creek at Upper Park Road. It is unknown how many bridges were built by the same people except to say that another span was reported to have been built in Story County in 1916. That span has since been replaced.
We do know that a similar span at Upper Park Road was built the same year as this span, but from another group of convicts from a prison located in Fort Madison. Both bridges are still standing today. This leads to the question of whether this bridge construction at Wapsi State Park was part of a larger scale project to allow for convicts to help construct roads and bridges across all of Iowa as part of the Good Roads program, a project to build a road system that was paved, bridges that were standardized and stable for larger volumes of traffic, and had a numbering system that was the precursor to the US Highway System, which was introduced in 1926. Some research would be needed to support these claims.
Punkaharju is a harju and belongs to Finland’s national landscapes. The narrow ridge section is about seven kilometers long and was created during the Ice age when a glacier basically acted like a giant, uneven scraper on the landscape. Punkaharju became a popular tourist destination at the beginning of the 19th century by Sakari Topelius […]
You have five more days to submit your bridge entries to the 2022 Bridgehunter Awards. Click here to access the Awards page and submit your entries. Deadline is December 1st at 12:00am Berlin Time. Voting will proceed afterwards.
Artistic Bridges, during our visit to my sisters home town, we did a photo shoot of all the children and grandchildren while we were there. We took a day to scope out a location for the shoot and came across this beautiful walking bridge. I do love the design of bridges, this one with the […]
This suspension bridge spans the Cedar River in Charles City, Iowa. It was built in 2010 replacing a century old suspension bridge that was destroyed in the Great 2008 Floods.
I somehow left this out of my posts on Paris ! I have been by here quite often especially along the Ave de New York side, and it really needs a post in my blog, Therefore, let me tell you a bit about the Passarelle Delbilly of Paris !! Hope you enjoy it as I, The Passarelle […]
October 4, 2009 The Kurilpa Bridge was inaugurated in the city of Brisbane, the capital of northeastern Australia’s state of Queensland. This multiple-mast, cable-stayed pedestrian and bicycle bridge crosses the Brisbane River and serves as a link between Kurilpa Point in Brisbane’s inner southern suburb of South Brisbane and Tank Street in the city’s central […]
October 21, 1981 In southwestern Pennsylvania, the second and current Sewickley Bridge was officially opened at 10:00 a.m. This steel continuous truss bridge, spanning the Ohio River and linking the borough of Sewickley with Moon Township, carries Pennsylvania State Route 4025 and the portion of the Allegheny County Belt System (a group of limited-access county […]
This week’s Pic of the Week takes us to Schleswig, located 40 km south of Flensburg in Schleswig-Holstein. We stopped here for a day trip because of a Festival of Vikings which took place at Königswiesen Park, located on the north shore of the Schlei south of the historic city center. Along the Wiesendamm we found what would be considered by many as one of the most unusual “covered” bridges ever built- if one would call it that.
It’s a combination concrete and steel bridge, where we have a culvert-like span over the Wiesendamm, but it is covered by a cement roof supported by steel columns. The design of the bridge makes it appear like there is an amphiteater over the water. The bridge is between 30 and 50 meters long and between 20 and 25 meters wide, which technicallly could be a place for some sort of entertainment venue. However, it is a bridge as it carries a wooden boardwalk that rund through the village and goes all the way to the Schlei, with a branch going to the harbor.
We don’t know who built the bridge, why he built it like he did and how it was built the way it way built. That one requires some help in a form of research. We do know that it was built after 2002, for there is plaque on the concrete wall inside the bridge that is a memorial to a person named Malte, who was killed in 2001. It is unknown if the murder was racially motivated, but when this bridge was built, it was dedicated in his memory.
And this is where your help comes in. What do we know about this bridge? Feel free to comment on it and/or send me an inquiry using the contact details enclosed here. The bridge will be included in my book project on Schleswig-Holstein’s bridges. If you have some bridges that deserve to be included or have any questions about this project, feel free to contact me. Info on the project is here.
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And Don’t Forget!
Ten more days to submit your bridge candidates for this year’s Bridgehunter Awards. To those who have submitted, I have received your entries and thank you for your help. 😀 For those who have not done so, now is the time. Deadline is December 1st at 12:00pm Berlin Time, 5:00am Chicago Time. Information on the Awards can be found here.
This is a blog about my project of visiting every bridge over the Genesee River and what I learned about the history, structure, and natural surroundings of each bridge.
The Bridgehunter's Chronicles 