1924 Wil-Cox Bridge Opening Photos

Earlier this month, I brought over the feature I did on the Wil-Cox Bridge on the old website to the blog. The seven arch concrete open-spandrel bridge opened in 1924 and was a key piece of the Central Highway. Recently, Ben Thurkill sent along a handful of photos from the bridge's 1924 opening. The five photos below are part of the NCDOT archives.

Today, the Wil-Cox Bridge is slowly becoming a center piece for a regional park. In August 2015, Davidson County Commissioners agreed to take over the bridge from the state. The state transferred the $2.5 million that would have been used to demolish the historic bridge to the county. Those funds are being used for bridge preservation and future development of the regional park. In 2016, Davidson County purchased nearly 14 nearby acres that included Fort York, a Confederate Fort built in the waning years of the Civil War. Davidson County intends on unveiling a master plan for the Wil-Cox Bridge, Fort York, and the regional park early in 2017.

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The story on how the unbuilt US 40 Expressway in Brownsville took 40 years to complete.

For nearly four decades, the four lane US 40 just east of Brownsville came to an abrupt end - shown in the photo above - at Grindstone Road in Redstone Township. In the late 1960s, what was then the Pennsylvania Division of Highways (PennDOH) extended a new four lane alignment of US 40 eastwards from Broadway Street slightly over one mile to Grindstone Road where an incomplete diamond interchange was built. Earlier in the decade, PennDOH had built a four lane US 40 in Washington County into Brownsville complete with a new crossing over the Monongahela River known as the Lane Bane Bridge. This new highway and bridge allowed US 40 to bypass the older Intercounty Bridge and downtown Brownsville.

After this new highway opened, nothing would happen to it for nearly forty years. US 40 traffic would use the ramps for this planned diamond interchange and then jog on Grindstone Road briefly before continuing towards Uniontown on the original National Road.
What is unknown (at least to…

The story of the Boy Scout Ramps on Interstate 79 North in NW Pennsylvania

If you are traveling on Interstate 79 North of Pittsburgh, you may notice the remnants of a set of off and on ramps at mile 100 just north of Exit 99 (US 422). There's a story behind these ramps. Forty years ago, these ramps were built specifically for two Boy Scout Jamboree's that were held at Moraine State Park - 1973 and 1977. The ramps purpose were to provide access to the north shore of Lake Arthur where the bulk of the festivities and campsite for the Jamboree were located. (Lawrence County Memories has a great write up and map of the festivities on its site.)

Not long after the Jamboree ended the ramps were abandoned. There are still remnants of the Boy Scout Ramps today.

Above: Sattelite view of the Boy Scout Jamboree Ramps.
Below: A view of the ramps from I-79 South.

The google street view image above gives a view along West Park Road of where the set of ramps intersected the highway. The ramps provided direct access to North Shore Drive (which is the right tur…

The few clues of the Northern Durham Parkway

Sometimes when you look through a box of maps for the first time in five years, you come across something you may have easily over looked. Such was the case when I found a 2004 (so rather recent) map of Raleigh. This map was made by the Dolph Map Company for WakeMed. In the Northwestern corner of Wake County, there were two items to the map showing roads that are still not in existence 13 years later.

The road is the Northern Durham Parkway - this is a proposed 19 mile highway from US 501 north of Durham to the Raleigh-Durham International Airport. The first proposals for this highway date back to 1967 when Eno Drive-Gorman Road was listed on the Durham Area Thoroughfare Plan. (1) Other proposals called the highway the Northwest and Northeast Durham Loop. (2) The route would serve as a northern and eastern bypass of Durham almost serving as a near loop. The route was fought vigorously for three decades by the Eno River Association citing concerns for the the Eno River, nearby n…

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