 |
Havre de Grace-Perryville Bridge (site)
Havre de Grace, MD 21078From the Maryland Transportation Authority:
The 1910 structure, acquired by a group of private citizens who operated it as a toll facility between 1910 and 1923, was converted from a railroad bridge constructed in 1873. The State Roads Commission (SRC), predecessor of the MDTA, bought the bridge in 1923 and continued to operate it as a toll facility.
The structure was extremely narrow -- with a roadway only 13 feet wide. Heavy trucks inched past each other, and there were many side-swiping accidents on the bridge. Traffic usually moved at a snail's pace.
To alleviate the problem, the SRC dualized the bridge in 1926 by building a deck over the old bridge, converting each level into a crossing for one-way traffic. This project was considered one of the most ingenious bridge-engineering feats of the time.
Then, new problems surfaced. The new deck had a vertical clearance of 12.5 feet – barely sufficient to accommodate the growing number of commercial vehicles traveling the bridge in the 1930s. Frequently, trucks stacked too high with freight became wedged between the deck and the overhead structure and could proceed only after their tires were deflated to allow adequate clearance.
The bridge was dismantled between 1942-43.
View user comments below.
For more information:
No comments have been posted.
Feedback: Do you have corrections or contributions for this page? Want to make a suggestion? Click here to send me an e-mail. I am espcially interested in memories, stories, postcards and photographs. Thanks!
Last updated: 2014-02-26 18:17:57 |
|
|
|
|
