GETTING COVERED FOR DEDICATION

July 15, 2008 07:06 pm

— It’s official: Ashtabula County’s newest covered bridge, the longest in the nation, will be dedicated 2:30 p.m. Aug. 26.
Betty Morrison, executive director of the Covered Bridge Festival Committee, said the date was decided upon last week during a meeting with Ashtabula County Engineer Tim Martin.
“We expect to have a bunch of dignitaries in town that day, elected officials,” Morrison says. “Growth Partnership is coordinating the events of the morning and having a lunch at Kent State, and we are hooking our event onto that at the end of the day.”
The bridge has progressed rapidly toward completion since the four 152-foot spans were set in May. Workers are securing more than 600 18-gauge steel panels to the roof, the ridge of which is about 120 feet above the Ashtabula River Gulf. Meantime, carpenters are completing the pedestrian walkways and started installing the siding and building the portals. Morrison says the siding will be green, making this bridge the county’s covered bridge of that color.
Morrison says the contractor, Union Industrial of Ashtabula, expects to have its portion of the bridge work wrapped up by the first part of August. The county still will have paving and approach work to complete before the bridge can open, but Martin and the Festival Committee are hoping the bridge will open up to traffic following the ceremony. Construction vehicles already are driving on the bridge’s wide wooden deck.
The two-lane bridge will carry all legal highway loads, including school buses and tractor-trailer traffic.
The dedication will be held at the south end, off Plymouth Ridge Road, where parking is plentiful.
During the dedication, the new bridge, which is on State Road, will be officially named. The county already has a State Road Bridge, in Monroe Township, which was dedicated 25 years ago as the first new covered bridge to be built in Ashtabula County in more than a half-century. It’s no secret that the committee hopes the bridge will bear the name of the man who conceived and designed it, John Smolen, who was county engineer when the bridge was announced more than eight years ago.
The new bridge is 608 feet long, making it the longest in the United States. It dethrones the Cornish-Windsor Bridge over the Connecticut River between Cornish, N.H., and Windsor, Vt. That bridge is 449.5 feet long.
The longest covered bridge in the world is in Hartland, New Brunswick, Canada. It is 1,282 feet in length.
Both of these bridges are much lower than Ashtabula County’s new bridge, which soars 80 feet above the Gulf at deck level.
Construction of Ashtabula County’s $8 million bridge began two years ago. Federal bridge funds paid for $5 million of the bridge; the balance came from state and local funds.
Morrison says that while the bridge’s high price tag has drawn some local criticism, the county already is reaping tourism dollars from it: The construction site was buzzing with visitors last weekend. Those numbers only will increase once the bridge is completed.
“With the amount of people coming here to see it, spending their money, there is already a good return,” she says. “You got to look at that construction cost from that perspective.”

Photos

UNION INDUSTRIAL Contractors is wrapping up work on the longest covered bridge in the United States, being built over the Ashtabula River on State Road. A dedication has been set for Aug. 26 at the south end of the bridge. CARL E. FEATHER