Highway

Designed to connect the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and the Great Smokey Mountains National Park in North Carolina, the Blue Ridge Parkway was planned to provide pleasant motoring and to conserve and interpret the unique natural and cultural resources of the Southern Highlands. It was conceived also as a public works project to relieve unemployment in the Appalachian region during the Great Depression.

The Parkway was designed as an elongated national park to provide scenic variety, including mountainsides, plateaus, streams, and broad river valleys, providing travelers with one of the most diversified driving experiences in the world.

Facts

Funded by Congress in 1933 as part of the National Industry Recovery Act, the Parkway was, at the time, the longest road ever to be planned as a single unit up.
Construction spanned 52 years and ultimately comprised 469 miles of roadway, 26 tunnels, and numerous culverts, bridges, and viaducts. This bridge was built in 1959.
Tunnels are used in areas of steep terrain to cut through ridges that run perpendicular to the roadway alignment.

Resources

Jolley, Harley E.  The Blue Ridge Parkway . University of Tennessee Press 1969.

Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 07:39:00 +0000

Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge

(not verified) Wed, 07/25/2012 - 03:39

Society

Main Category

Sub Category

Era

Date Created

Location Country

Coordinates

40.029, -76.517

Address1

Veterans Memorial Bridge

Address2

Susquehanna River

City

West Hempfield

State

Country

USA

Website

http://www.asce.org/Project/Columbia-Wrightsville-Bridge/

Creator

Long, James

Wiley-Maxon Construction Company

The total length of the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge is 7,374 feet. Its construction required 100,000 cubic yards of concrete and 8 million pounds of steel reinforcing rods.

Consisting of 28 arches, each 185 feet long, the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge carrying automobile traffic across the Susquehanna River in southeast Pennsylvania is believed to be the longest concrete-arch bridge in the world. The bridge's location is also historically significant. The longest covered wooden bridge in the world - 5,690 feet long - was built there in 1814, only to be destroyed by ice and floods almost 20 years later. Its replacement - 70 feet shorter but considerably wider - was burned 30 years later by Union troops as a tactical measure during the Civil War.

A third bridge - 5,390 feet long - remained in place nearly another 30 years until its destruction by a hurricane in 1896. The fourth Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge, of steel-truss construction, was erected in only 21 days and carried rail and highway traffic on the same deck. The trains ultimately proved to be a significant bottleneck to traffic on the transcontinental Lincoln Highway, completed in 1925. The present Columbia-Wrightsville bridge, dedicated solely to highway traffic, was built alongside the fourth bridge.

Facts

The total length of the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge is 7,374 feet. Its construction required 100,000 cubic yards of concrete and 8 million pounds of steel reinforcing rods.
Each span of the present Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge consists of three separate concrete ribs connected at five points by horizontal concrete struts.
In nominating the present Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge as an engineering landmark, the Pennsylvania section of the American Society of Civil Engineers noted that it is "a splendid example of the graceful multiple-span, reinforced-concrete arched form popular in early 20th-century highway bridges in the United States."
The Lincoln Highway, also known as U.S. Highway 30, was the nation's first transcontinental highway, connecting a series of local highways and stretching from New York City to San Francisco. The opening in 1940 of the cross-state Pennsylvania Turnpike, a part of Interstate 76, subsequently provided faster passage.
The fourth Columbia-Wrightsville bridge carried passenger trains until 1954 and freight traffic until 1958. It was not dismantled until 1964. Remnants of the piers that supported it remain visible today.

Resources

Glenn Banner, Flames Across the Susquehanna, Columbia Historical Preservation Society.

Alaska Highway

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 07:38:38 +0000

Alaska Highway

(not verified) Wed, 07/25/2012 - 03:38

Society

Main Category

Sub Category

Era

Date Created

Location Country

Coordinates

64.047778, -145.718611

Address1

Dawson Creek British Columbia

Address2

to Delta Junction, Alaska, US

City

Delta Junction

State

Country

USA

Zip

99737

Website

http://www.asce.org/project/alaska-highway/

Creator

MacDonald, Thomas

The Alaska Highway, initially called the Alaskan-Canadian (Alcan) Military Highway, provided an essential transportation link to the Yukon and Alaska during World War II. It begins at the junction with several Canadian highways in Dawson Creek, British Columbia and runs to Delta Junction, Alaska, via Whitehorse, Yukon. After the shock of Pearl Harbor, the Alaska Highway was a first step in America's defense strategy -- a vital military supply line during the war. Over ten thousand Army Engineers were rushed to the far Northwest. Their mission was to blaze a road to Alaska in less than a year. They battled mountains, muskeg and mosquitoes on a front that stretched across miles and miles of rugged, sub-Arctic terrain. To this day, it has remained the only transportation link to the Yukon and Inuvik Region of the Northwest Territories. Built in 1942 in just eight months, the 2500 km (1570 miles) highway was a significant feat of time critical engineering and construction. Besides being completed much sooner than expected, the Alaska Highway was the largest undertaking at the time for a northern construction project. It still remains one of the largest northern construction projects to this day. During the project's construction, significant experiences were gained in Arctic engineering and construction, particularly in permafrost. The Alaska Highway provided an opportunity for the development and refinement of cold region engineering roadway construction techniques and construction supply techniques. In addition to increasing knowledge in the field of cold region engineering, it enabled the development, settlement and economic growth of millions of acres of land. The highway also became the basis for a substantial tourism-based economy. Resources 1.Twichell, Heath. Northwest Epic: The Building of the Alaska Highway. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992. 2. Remley, David A. Crooked road : The story of the Alaska Highway. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1976.