Abandoned town under water emerges! Somerfield Pa Video of inundated town that includes footage of the bridge and old photos of the bridge. Stuffthats Gone | |
Curses! Foiled again!
Found some info about this interesting bridge and added to the page only to find out that it is a duplicate. 8^(
info needs to be edited/merged and the duplicate removed.
I have to agree with Nathan...and would classify this one as an "Interesting Ruin".
PennDOT already found the US-40 truss bridge seen in the background of the Panoramio photos from 2000. The bridge there today is a PennDOT special. (Ugly modern bridge with stone formliner on all concrete elements)
As for the stone bridge, I would argue that the bridge falls a bit short of preserved and perfect shape. In the photos from 2000, I see evidence of severe deterioration. Entire portions of the parapet are missing, and on some portions of the bridge the belt course and even parts of the spandrel wall are missing as well. The loss of the stones in the spandrel wall appear to have exposed the earth fill to the water in which the bridge is submerged, which have caused it to slowly wash the fill out of the bridge. This can be seen in a 2010 photo of the bridge where portions of the added concrete deck have broken and settled, since the fill that once supported them is gone.
Check this one out! Who needs Atlantis? We have the entire city of Somerfield, PA and its bridge submerged and preserved perfectly underneath the Youghiogheny River Lake. However the bridge appears above water from time to time. Well, at least this bridge is safe from the clutches of PennDOT, then again, maybe not; for this one they may hire rogue ex-NAVY Seals and have them plant underwater explosives on the bridge to destroy it.
I took these photos from the east during a low water period in the dam on December 5, 2008. The second photo shows the Somerfield bridge's proximity to Route 40 (and the newly built bridge over the Yough reservoir). You can see the bases of the piers of the previous Route 40 bridge that was demolished earlier that year.
The other page is here:
http://bridgehunter.com/pa/somerset/bh50552/