Hugh Chatham Memorial Bridge

What if we could get the town to agree to delay the demolition so that a group of concerned citizens could look into the possiblility of saving the bridge as a bike/pedestrian greenway site. The location fits in perfectly with the greenway master plan. It seems to me that so far, all the engineering inspections have been pointed towards re-opening it as a traffic bridge but maybe the cost would be less as a greenway. If we can show the way to reduce liabiltity and cost to the town, I think they would agree to save it. It's an icon so closely identified to the Town of Elkin that it's image is on the Elkin Seal.

I visited this bridge Mar 2010. It looks to me like

the downstream beams were encased in concrete when a

Sidewalk was added. An attached photo shows the

expensive to repair result.

From what I can tell this bridge will not be removed until 2010, probably due to the scant transportation budget. I guess there isn't enough money for superfluous projects like tearing down historic bridges that aren't in the way of anything. Still, it'll be a pile of scrap someday, sadly.

AMEN with that brother!!

"Where there is no vision, the people perish." Proverbs 29:18.

Sadly, Terence Mann, the James Earl Jones character in the movie Field of Dreams summed it up pretty well when he said, "America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again."

Which is why we continue to inexplicably destroy our heritage. Europe has cathedrals and castles and yes, bridges, that are centuries old and have withstood the ravages of time, weather and war.

But here? No, too many of our leaders lack the vision to recognize such structures as part of our heritage, they see such structures simply as eyesores to be destroyed (at taxpayer expense) and replaced (at taxpayer expense) with new structures that serve the same purpose as the old ones that they destroyed.

What sense does that make?

As citizens, we are told we must recycle plastic bottles, bags, newspapers, boxes, cans and other materials, but our leaders do not recycle old bridges, they just throw them away.

It's just rediculous.

This bridge is supposedly scheduled to be removed this year, though I don't know for certain. It's pretty ridiculous, since it seems it would make a nice pedestrian crossing of the river. I noticed that the city council of Elkin voted unanimously to have it removed. I guess they think that such a bridge is an "eyesore," completely missing the beauty of v-lacing in the top members among other things, or the fact that a bridge of this type is a novelty in this state. Instead of a local attraction, they'll be left with street stubs that lead to nowhere. Ridiculous.