Friday, November 27, 2009

Bridge of Honor

You may have remembered I posted shortly after starting my blog about the demolition of the Pomeroy-Mason Bridge in Pomeroy, Ohio.

Recently the false-work was removed from the West Virginia Side of the bridge allowing me to get some shots of the completed span. The span is a 1852 foot long 4 lane cable stay bridge. The bridge took over 5 years to build. The first delay was caused by an unforeseen slippage. The second delay in construction was caused by concrete that was used in the Mason Tower failed testing and a 20 foot section had to be removed and replaced. Then a form of shale was found that had to be contained and resulted in the construction of the 730 x 35 foot retaining wall. The wall was designed to depict life along the Ohio River in Pomeroy. Look for pictures to come to the blog soon. The final delay came when the form travelers had to be redesigned and rebuilt after a failure on a bridge under construction in Puerto Rico. The bridge was originally supposed to cost $45.6 million and ended up costing $65 million. You can read more about the construction of the Bridge of Honor here and here.

The bridge was named the Bridge of Honor to honor four star General James Hartinger of Middleport who was the first commander of NORAD and Congressional Medal of Honor winners Staff Sargent Jimmie Stewart of Mason West Virginia, and Corporal Edward Bennett. You can learn more about General Hartinger here. You can learn about Staff Sargent Jimmie Stewart here, and Corporal Edward Bennett here.

The bridge is illuminated at night making it a spectacular structure. I stopped the other night to get a few shots.

The first shot is from close to downtown Pomeroy looking up the Ohio River. The river was calm and you can see a wonderful reflection of the bridge in the water.



The second shot is a 5 shot panorama stitched together using Hugin. Both shots were shot using a tripod and a 30 second exposure.



Enjoy

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