Crews give 132-year- old Pickaway County bridge a trim
ORIENT — At 228 feet long and 30 feet high, the Orient Bridge crossing Big Darby Creek in Pickaway County towers over most of the natural landscape. Originally built in 1885 by the Cleveland Bridge and Iron Co., the bridge was fully functional for nearly a century until the state built a bypass next to it.
Kept for its historic and aesthetic features, the Whipple through-truss design bridge sat untouched for almost three decades. It was years before someone noticed a major problem: A tree was growing through the bridge’s floor beams.
David Simmons, president of the Ohio Historic Bridge Association, first noticed the cottonwood growing around the iron structure 10 years ago while he was leading a tour in the area. The advocacy group couldn’t afford to deal with the problem until a former member left an endowment to the organization this year. The tree work cost the group about $35,000.
“There are a lot of bridges in Ohio that need attention like this,” Simmons said Monday while watching a work crew begin to remove the unwanted growth.
Because the bridge is on public land, the group had to get a permit approved by the Ohio Department on Transportation. The agency, Simmons said, gave him few restrictions.
Simmons and the two-man crew from McCullough’s Tree Service Inc. in Newark arrived at 9 a.m. Monday and started by removing smaller silver maples whose branches had begun to grow between the bridge’s trusses. The brush was so overgrown that the crew had to return Wednesday to cut away at the massive cottonwood, which had grown taller than the bridge. By the end of that day, the Orient Bridge was tree-free.
James Arrington, one of the arborists working on the trees, said the job was a first for him. “It’s different than working in a backyard, that’s for sure,” he said.
The Ohio Historic Bridge Association normally doesn’t do “brick-and-mortar work,” Simmons said. It has worked on only one other bridge hands-on: In 1996, it restored a covered bridge in Muskingum County.
Restorations of metal bridges such as the Orient Bridge typically involve rotting decks, Simmons said; problems with the structure are less common.
He said he hopes to see the Orient Bridge become part of a scenic bike trail someday.
Simmons said that although some people might object to spending money on preservation projects such as the Orient, he thinks protecting and restoring old bridges is a crucial element of our history.
“Projects like this help us understand where we’ve been and help us see where we want to go in the future,” Simmons said.