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With that
probably unintentional paraphrasing of humorist Will Rogers,
Tony Zaya set out to confirm a troupe of DelDOT planners in
their commitment to replace long-emasculated Smith Bridge with a
brand-new covered bridge and beguile a bevy of château country
residents pressing to have that accomplished as quickly as
possible. While
highway builders around the nation are not exactly into
resurrecting the 19th Century art -- Delaware, it is said, will
join only Vermont in erecting such a structure primarily for
transportation, as
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opposed to tourist-luring, purposes if the
project goes through as now expected -- a certain fascination
has developed over the potential for linking of past and
present. Zaya
was quick to exploit that at a meeting of the Smith Bridge
advisory panel on Nov. 21. "A
covered bridge is an anachronistic thing. It's a highly romantic
thing, but also an incredibly practical thing," he said. "We
know things today that they didn't know about then. The
old-timers just looked for what worked for folks downstream and
did the same thing. While we have technology, we don't have the
availability of old-growth timber like they had. There's a lot
more red tape today."
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Tony
Zaya |
Zaya is
one of the owners of Lancaster County Timber Framers Inc., of
York, Pa. Covered bridges are one of the timber structures in
which his firm specializes. It hopes to bid on the Smith Bridge
project when Delaware Department of Transportation completes the
design phase.
To that
end, he said the actual span could be put up in about three
weeks. That would follow about two months that it would take to
prepare the site. Ordering and getting delivery of suitable wood
could take anywhere from a month to 12 weeks, he estimated.
"What
would happen is that it would be put together off-site to make
sure everything fits, taken apart and reassembled here," he
explained. While
closing the crossing for whatever period is required might be
grating, he assuaged feelings by proposing that it could be
painless if turned into a community venture. "You could
have work teams doing different things, like painting, and
everybody could carve their initials when it was all done,"
he said. He
suggested that employing some amateur labor and holding to a
three-week construction period is feasible "if everything
is orchestrated right." A
couple of the DelDOT people chucked aloud at the notion of
anything being built in just three weeks, apparently forgetting
that, comparatively speaking on a foot-by-foot basis, their
department is still bragging about doing better than that reconstructing
Interstate 95 and several bridges along its route
north of Wilmington. Relatively
speaking, he said, covered bridges are not an ancient
phenomenon. The first in this country for which there is
documentation was put up in 1805. "There
were 10,000 in this country at one time. Now there's only
something like 850 in the entire United States and 160 of those
are in Pennsylvania and 30 in Lancaster County. Delaware has
two," he said. The
Delaware bridges are at Woodbridge and Ashland. There
has been a Brandywine crossing -- probably a covered bridge --
at the present Smith Bridge
| Then
& Now . . . |
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| Smith
Bridge in the 1930s |
Today's
uncovered span |
location just on the Delaware side
of the state line since 1816. The stone abutments which support
the present bridge date to 1839. The covered bridge was burned
in an arson fire on Halloween, 1961.
Zaya said
that, with proper maintenance, an 'old-fashioned' wooden covered
bridge will easily outlast its modern counterparts.
"Life expectancy for concrete-and-steel [bridges] is
something like 60 to 70 years. There are covered bridges that
have been standing for 150 to 175 years," he said.
Meanwhile,
"they
are great for getting in out of the rain" and, he added,
"you don't see many people sending Christmas cards with
paintings of steel bridges."
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