Skip to main content

Summer Vacation Road Trip - Washington and Greene Counties, PA

Back to some of the photos I took while in Pennsylvania over the 4th of July. On Saturday, July 5th, I headed out on a small road trip in rural Washington and Greene Counties. Mainly to explore parts of both counties that I hadn't seen or been to in years.

Route: PA 48, PA 51, I-70, PA 43, PA 88, PA 188, PA 221, PA 231, US 40, Old National Pike, I-70 and various routes to the South Hills and then home.

The entire flickr set is here.

I found two keystones along the way - Fredericktown and Jefferson. really need to get back to updating the site...I'm still working on West Virginia for what seems like forever - and I have at least three dozen keystones to add.

Just beyond Jefferson on PA 221 is the Cox Farm Covered Bridge. The bridge was built in 1940 and is a simple Kingpost Through Truss covered bridge - which is very widely used style of covered bridge in Southwestern PA.

Throughout out the trip, there were plenty of great rural barns like this one just a few hundred yards east of the PA 221/I-79 Interchange.

One of Fred Yenerall's subjects were rural one room schoolhouses. The simplicity of these buildings really tell a story. Where 221 meets PA 18 near Prosperity - there is a former one room schoolhouse - Archer No. 1.

I headed up PA 221 to US 40 and the Claysville 'S' Bridge. The stone arch bridge shaped like an S dates from the early days of the National Road in the early 1800's. The bridge is the centerpiece of a small roadside park. (Unfortunately, the sun was pretty much shining directly into the best photo angles.)



I continued on PA 221 north to its end at PA 231. I had traveled this part of 221 before, but I didn't recall seeing this great old truss bridge north of Taylorstown on Walker Hill Road.

My next stop was at the Sawhill Covered Bridge - which I first photographed in December 2003. But since then, it has been totally rehabilitated. In 2004, the bridge was damage from flooding rains from the remnants of Hurricane Ivan. The rebuild occurred in 2005.

Headed back towards Claysville on PA 231 and decided to follow the old National Pike (US 40) through West Alexander. This alignment begins at the Claysville Interchange (Exit 6) on I-70 and runs through West Alexander and into West Virginia.

I hadn't been on this stretch of the old highway - and it was actually a nice country drive.


I then headed towards Pittsburgh to visit relatives for dinner. On the way, I snapped a shot of this great old button copy relic from the Pittsburgh Department of Public Works.

Not a bad piece way to close out a road trip. One more set from this vacation is left - a walk around Elizabeth and Webster, PA

Comments

Steve A said…
I just realized that's the same S bridge I saw when I headed out to Indy. So there will be some more angles for photos once I get to that part of the update.

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

Huey P. Long Bridge (New Orleans, LA)

Located on the lower Mississippi River a few miles west of New Orleans, the Huey P. Long Bridge is an enormous steel truss bridge that carries both road and rail traffic on an old-time structure that is a fascinating example of a bridge that has evolved in recent years to meet the traffic and safety demands of modern times. While officially located in suburban Jefferson Parish near the unincorporated community of Bridge City, this bridge’s location is most often associated with New Orleans, given that it’s the largest and most recognizable incorporated population center in the nearby vicinity. For this reason, this blog article considers the bridge’s location to be in New Orleans, even though this isn’t 100% geographically correct. Completed in 1935 as the first bridge across the Mississippi River in Louisiana and the first to be built in the New Orleans area, this bridge is one of two bridges on the Mississippi named for Huey P. Long, a Louisiana politician who served as the 40th Gove