Skip to main content

PA Updates

It took me about two months to do, but I finished a pretty big PA update over two parts. I enjoyed this update for a few reason first. It cleared me of two years worth of my own photos to add. But also because of the number of new features that were added.

So here's a review:

I added a new feature entitled, "Pennsylvania's Engineering Marvels". It opens with three features, the Kinzua Viaduct, the Tunkhannock Viaduct, and Roebling's Aqueduct. Three bridges that were major accomplishments of their time. The Kinzua Viaduct has a sad history as the 2003 tornado that severely damaged the structure and the impact to the local tourism business it has since made. As always, time will tell on the direction of this feature but it will include things beyond bridges.

I added two new covered bridges from Central PA that I took in 2005 for a trip to State College. I even added a few of my own Keystone's that I took over the past two years.

As always there were plenty of submissions including photos from Bill Symons of the Kinzua Viaduct. His photos date to 1985 and were what allowed me to do the feature. John Krakoff and his knack of finding little treasures sent along a number of photos he took in Pittsburgh in 2001 and excerpts from the 1967 PA MUTCD. Unfortunately he didn't have enough quarters to make more copies at the PennDot Library.

There's always PA Ends and a handful were updated and a page covering PA Turnpike 576 was added covering the ends of that recently opened highway. I also added photos to the Findlay Connector Page.

The funny thing for me is that after an update i feel like wow I've added a lot. And in this update I did. But not long after I'm like ok..there's still a lot more I can cover. And that has already set in. I guess since I know I have a bunch of old Turnpike Postcards from Bill Symons still to add, and that I have to rearrange the home office to find a bunch of photos Denny Pine sent me made the "Ok you still don't have much" feeling come around quicker.

As for what's next...I continue to work through my personal backlog it is still in April 2005 right now with a roadtrip page on NY 30 through the Adirondack Mountains. Looking back at the photos on that trip really made me appreciate the opportunity that I had to explore that area of the country the two years I was up there.

After that a good bit of Georgia and Florida. I've received another full cd of photos from John Krakoff along with photos from the regular contributors. A lot of the photos on John's CD will find their way to Steve Alpert as well. I think a few features may come out of John's CD...we'll see.

Then after that is South Carolina. A lot of info on I-73. One of the good things about doing this blog is that is like an open notebook for research on various features/article etc I have done or may do. The summaries of the articles help in case a local paper's website doesn't archive articles. And if there are any photos from a roadtrip...I can recall what the heck it was I took a photo of and why. The commentary I try as much to leave off the site, the webpage should deal with factual information as much as possible. The blog allows me to make a commentary and even question what is being reported or the actions of those involved.

Also a number of photos for South Carolina. I may try to dive back into the 1920 Trunk Routes.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

  There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population.  The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third