During the summer of 2010, Nathan Holth, Luke Gordon and myself were on a bridgehunting tour through the southwestern portion of Pennsylvania and parts of West Virginia, photographing some of the finest iron historic bridges in our path and getting as many of them as we can before they were demolished and replaced. The Bellaire Bridge was one of them on the list. It had already been condemned and demolition was imminent. Even when we tried photographing it, we were shot at by local residents and the police were patrolling the roads on both sides of the Ohio River. Three years later, attempts were made to demolish the structure and sell the metal parts on ebay, but to no avail. An article I wrote for AreaVoices in Minnesota but can be found here.
Fast forward to 2023 and the bridge is still standing- according to fellow pontist, Calvin Sneed. Mr. Sneed was a regular contributor to bridgehunter.com, having visited over 900 bridges and taken over 30,000 pics. He has also provided some bridge photos and stories to BHC. Since the beginning of the year, he has been doing a series on these historic structures for a pair of newspapers in Tennessee. With his blessing, I’m presenting his masterpiece which after years of neglect and threats of demolition is still standing. A candidate for the 2023 Bridgehunter Awards in the category Endangered TRUSS.
***********
Standing elegantly over the Ohio River is a huge, heavy-looking, almost 100-year-old bridge that probably should have been gone years ago. But not only is it still here, it hasn’t carried a single vehicle across the river in 32 years!
Just south of Wheeling, West Virginia, the Bellaire Bridge (also known as the Bellaire Interstate Toll Bridge and the Benwood Bridge) connects Bellaire, Ohio, and Benwood, West Virginia, by way of a steel bridge that’s 2,100 feet long.
So why is this beautiful bridge with no vehicles on it still standing? Traffic was blocked off to the approaches on both sides of the river long ago. Believe me, many agencies and individuals would love to see this giant mass of steel dynamited right into the swift downwaters of the Ohio River. But so far, the Bellaire Benwood Bridge has defied all the odds.
In the 1920s, state governments were looking for ways to get steady workers from Ohio to and from the many steel mills that dotted the West Virginia side of the Ohio River. Ground was broken in 1926 for a massive three-span iron bridge being built by the Mount Vernon Bridge Company of Mount Vernon, Ohio.
Engineer John Edwin Greiner designed a riveted metal cantilever, three-span Baltimore-type through truss bridge, with the middle span 700 feet long, crossing the barge channel of the river. It was built as a toll bridge, the 5 cent toll remaining in place until 1971 when the fee to cross was increased to 25 cents. By 1984 with the bridge losing money, the toll was pushed up to 50 cents a trip.
Alas, the extra money could not keep it open. The Bellaire Benwood Bridge closed to vehicular traffic in 1991.
As it turns out, the end of the bridge’s vehicular career was not the end of its life. After it closed, the Bellaire Benwood Bridge was sold that same year to the owner of a nearby construction company at the same time the approach ramp on the Ohio side was removed, and the one on the West Virginia side abandoned.
For the next 11 years, the bridge claimed the skyline, but not much more. In 2002, city administrators from Benwood requested the bridge be demolished because concrete chunks of the deck — the size of basketballs and footballs — were dislodging and falling on the neighborhood underneath it. That demolition never happened.
Ownership of the doomed bridge changed hands twice in 2010, with a federal court ordering the bridge’s demolition by 2013. In fact, three companies filed liens for scrap iron rights in the event the bridge was torn down. Today, 10 years later, they’re still waiting. As of my visit five years ago, and a subsequent call to the Benwood Police Department last week for this story, the defiant bridge as you see in the pictures is still with us.
The Bellaire Benwood Bridge holds the distinction of being the second-oldest highway bridge spanning the entire 981-mile Ohio River system from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Cairo, Illinois. It is also one of the oldest surviving highway cantilever steel truss bridges in the country. According to one historic bridge site, pre-1950s steel cantilever bridges are among the most endangered in the country.
In the horror movie “The Silence of the Lambs,” when the character of Clarice Starling is headed over to “Belvedere, Ohio” and she crosses the Ohio River, you’ll probably notice the rusting, steel cantilevered bridge ferrying her car across the river. That scene was filmed on the Bellaire Benwood Bridge.
The Bellaire Benwood Bridge is a rare, beautiful, historic landmark among the many bridges on the Ohio River. Few bridges that have stared demolition deftly in the face have survived the wrecking ball. But as of today, this one is still defying the odds.
The Bridgehunter's Chronicles 