Cornwall Bridge, Cornwall Bridge, CT

That's not a typo. Cornwall Bridge is actually within the town of Cornwall Bridge. It carries Route 7 over the Housatonic, and is just a few miles south of West Cornwall Covered Bridge, the bridge from yesterday's post.

The Cornwall Bridge is a six span, open spandrel concrete arch bridge. It really sounds like I know what I'm talking about when I write that. It's a huge bridge, but crossing it by car, there is no clue as to its size or beauty. You have to stop the car and look over the side -- or drive down the steep hill past the tourist shop and the church and just be bedazzled.

I learned a few important things from this trip. First is, _charge your camera battery_. I don't know why I didn't. I thought of it the night before and that very morning, but just assumed I'd have enough charge. I didn't. The camera was gasping along on fumes here. It'd shut off. I'd wait a few seconds and turn it on and get another shot or two. It would shut off again. I managed to make it through this bridge, but it totally gave up the ghost on the next stop in New Milford at the Lover's Leap Bridge. I had to rely on my phone's camera for most of those shots. And then it ran out of power, too.

So, lesson learned. If you're going to drive a couple of hours to get someplace beautiful, and you have a full slate of bridges to photograph as well as a hike, make sure you are _prepared_. I didn't prepare then.

Maybe lesson not learned. I rode my bike five miles in the wrong direction this morning because I didn't check my map carefully enough. Late for work, too.

If you plan to visit the Cornwall Bridge in Cornwall Bridge, you can park at the foot of the bridge itself, as the creepy pickup truck with its lights on was doing in the second picture. What was up with that. Or, you can park up top at the trailhead to the Mohawk Trail. Which I did.

The Mohawk Trail climbs Breadloaf Mountain and joins at the summit to the Appalachian Trail. It's entirely possible to take the trail from here, all the way south to Bulls Bridge and then leave Connecticut at that point for New York, keep hiking, and come eventually to the Bear Mountain Suspension Bridge over the Hudson. I would love to do that someday -- just hike the Appalachian Trail for a few days.

This far south, the Berkshires aren't really a mountain range; more a series of tall hills, yet the hike is fairly strenuous. It's well marked, but don't expect the paths to be to the well-trod level of the ones up at Shenipsit State Park. The trail is steep and rocky and you will be grabbing at trees to help get up and back down again.

Summit of Breadloaf Mountain

But when you do get to the top -- heaven. The panorama above was taken with my phone; the sunlight reflected off the scrape on my Canon's lens in such a way as to ruin every shot. It's hard to get a good shot of the Housatonic River valley far below. The summit is cleared out with plenty of bare rock on which to build a fire; many, many hikers likely have done just that.

West Cornwall Covered Bridge, West Cornwall-Sharon, CT

The third and last covered bridge in Connecticut, the West Cornwall Covered Bridge, crossing the Housatonic about 20 miles north of Bulls Bridge, a covered bridge in Kent. If you're already headed to the Berkshires to see one of them, you might as well see the other. And as long as you're coming to see _those_, you might as well stop by the Cornwall Bridge, a huge arch bridge in the town named Cornwall Bridge. That's a different post, though.

Of the three covered bridges in Connecticut, this is the largest, though still not wide enough to let two cars pass inside. Wikipedia says the bridge was originally built in 1864. Covered bridges weren't terribly rare back then; if you're going to be building a wooden lattice bridge anyway, not much reason not to wall it in and put a peaked roof on it to protect the deck from the weather. According to the Connecticut Historic Bridge site, the state department of transportation concealed steel beams in the flooring (same as they did with the Comstock covered bridge) to keep it safe for traffic. During last year's tropical storm, the Housatonic became violent and deadly -- but the bridge weathered it without damage.

For all the businesses in West Cornwall with "Covered Bridge" in their names, you'd think there'd be better parking for tourists -- the other two covered bridges have loads. If you want to get out of the car and walk around, you'll have to park in some business' parking spot, or along the cul de sac that runs for a short way along the river.

Once you are parked, there's plenty of places from which to take great pictures. Just watch the traffic; this bridge does see heavy use.

The Appalachian Trail does not run through this bridge, but it's not far away. I'll talk more about that in my next post, when I write about Cornwall Bridge.

Not to be confused with West Cornwall Covered Bridge.

This was the last major bridge shoot I did with my point-and-shoot Canon G12. There's a small scrape on the lens that ruins every picture taken with it; I had to be really careful to keep the scrape outside of any picture detail. If you look for it, you can see it in both these shots. I really need to get that fixed. I understand there are kits that can maybe do it. It's a really handy camera with very powerful built-in software.

Since then, I've been using an older, but yet-unscratched, Canon EOS Rebel T1 camera. It's a digital single lens reflex (DSLR) camera that does hardly anything for you. That's also its strength. Since it doesn't know all the rules about taking pictures like the G12 does, I can break them if I need to. Plus it can shrink the aperture down to a pinhole, allowing some pretty cool effects in the right hands (not mine).

The Interactive Connecticut Bridge Map

Struggling with the Google Maps v3 API. I thought I'd just toss (hah!) together a quick web app, using Google Maps, that will show the Connecticut bridges I've gathered through Wikipedia, the CT Historic Highway Bridges site, and my own explorations.

The left side marks the Connecticut bridges I have yet to photograph; right side, the ones I have. This isn't to say that all the bridges on the left side are worth photographing, but if I am in the area, I want to make sure I get the lesser bridges as long as I am there. Right?

Yesterday I missed several on the way to Stevenson Dam Bridge and the Derby-Shelton Bridge. I'm not sure any of them are worth going back for (I like the really big bridges), but... I'd have stopped to get a phone camera shot, anyway.

This is a LOT faster to update than the drawn map I was keeping in Inkscape. More accurate, too. It's built on high precision GPS coordinates so that I can just get directions on my phone without having to print out the directions all the time. Especially handy on a bicycle.

Yet to come: the bridges in New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts that are within easy photographing range.

Derby-Shelton Bridge, Derby, CT

Derby-Shelton Bridge behind railroad bridge

Just a few miles south of the Stevenson Dam Bridge, the Derby-Shelton Bridge connects the cities of Shelton and Derby ("Connecticut's Smallest City", brags the Welcome to Derby sign). The Housatonic here is wide and slow and soon meet its end in Stratford, emptying into Long Island Sound. A dam just north of Derby creates Lake Housatonic.

Derby-Shelton Bridge panorama

The bridge is a four span arch bridge made of concrete. The stronger concrete allows the arches to be thinner, compared to the somewhat sturdier construction required for stone arch bridges, like the Bulkeley in Hartford.

Derby is full of rewards for the dedicated bridge hunter. Apart from the Derby-Shelton Bridge itself, there's the three span steel truss railroad bridge, and turning 180 degrees from the above photographs, the deck truss Commodore Isaac Hull Bridge dramatically crosses the Housatonic as well.

Commodore Isaac Hull Bridge

The Naugatuck River flows into the Housatonic just south of here. The entire area is a haven for river recreation.

I'm really impatient for spring so I can see these places full of life....

Stevenson Dam Bridge, Monroe-Oxford, CT

Stevenson Dam Bridge

I was a little worried this bridge wouldn't be around when I got there. Comstock Bridge was disassembled first time I got there, Ashland Mill Bridge was demolished. When I was researching the Stevenson Dam Bridge, I was reading that it was being replaced in 2009. The Lake Zoar residents (the lake formed by the dam drowned the hamlet of Zoar) and the people downstream on the Housatonic aren't wild about the bridge being closed or replaced. One issue: the Housatonic all up and down its length was previously used for industrial runoff from its source in Pittsfield, MA. Any new bridge construction could stir up contaminated silt in Lake Zoar.

The Stevenson Dam Bridge carries Route 34 between Monroe and Oxford. It's a 24 span arch bridge and I think it might be the only dam in Connecticut that carries a road over it. There aren't many bridges nearby that carry traffic over the Housatonic; the next one to the south is in Derby, the one to the north in Newtown. It's the Stevenson or nothing for fifteen miles in either direction.

The HDR source images

This shot was an HDR experiment. I've recently started following several professional photographers on Google+ and learned a lot about using apertures to, for instance, remove all the traffic on the bridge. High apertures, long exposures and a tripod. The lesson was that I did everything I could do, and the end picture looks pretty much like the bridge looked to me in real life, but I couldn't make it look better that it was.

Sometimes they open the dam up -- that would have been a great picture. A sunny day would have been better (and it was supposed to be sunny today).

There's two great places to park if you wish to visit the bridge. Coming south on 34 to Monroe, continue straight where the road turns onto the bridge down a steep, one lane road to the power station. There is a parking area there for a trail leading down to the river.

On the Oxford side of the dam, there is a small spot to park and take pictures along the span of the bridge, like the one to the right.

There are tourist spots all along both sides of Lake Zoar where, in nicer weather, you can canoe or fish, as long as you don't eat what you catch.

From the archives: Ashland Mill Bridge, Jewett City, CT

I had a flat tire on the bike and an early meeting, so I wasn't able to get the bridge I wanted to photograph today. Tomorrow's going to be kinda cruddy, weather-wise, as well. So tonight, one from the archives: a footbridge across a canal in Jewett City.

By itself, it isn't that amazing or historic; it's not that different from ornamental footbridges in any town in the country. Just downstream from this bridge, though, recently stretched the famous Ashland Mill Bridge. Though dripping with history, it had become dangerous and closed to all traffic. A park had grown up around it. There was a new bridge. The old one was demolished.

Jewett City has that kind of small town beauty that you often hear about but rarely find -- and never close to cities. Driving through the town sent me right back to my childhood in Linwood, Massachusetts, a village even _smaller_ than Jewett City. Not that there's any sort of contest going on.

Near where I grew up

Anyway. Ashland Mill Bridge. According to the Public Archaeology site, the Ashland Mill Bridge was one of two bridges in the area constructed by the Berlin Iron Bridge company and of which was said:

The two bridges made by you, of iron, are in place. . . . I am very much pleased with them, and am satisfied that they are constructed on the right principle and are destined to be the bridge of the future.


So there you have it. The bridge of the future almost, but not quite, made it to the present.

Main Street Bridge, Hartford, CT

As long as the weather stays decent enough to bike to work, I'll keep taking pictures along the way. Or a little out of the way.

This is the Main Street Bridge in Hartford; it carries Main Street over the Whitehead Highway. There was (is) some controversy about the Whitehead Highway; I guess it was going to become yet another highway twisting through Hartford, the way Route 84 does today.

You don't really notice the bridge when you're walking over it (you may notice the ornate, wrought-iron railings, though), but once you go down below, you can appreciate the beauty, skill and detail of the bridge. And also how incredibly low it is.

It wasn't always that low, and there wasn't always a road running beneath it. It originally crossed a river (the Little River), and connected Hartford proper to South Hartford. An incredibly important road and bridge. They filled in the river and built up the road and now it's a shadow of its former self.

According to the bridge's entry in the CT Historical Bridges site, the stone mason who built this bridge ended the effort completely paralyzed on one side.

This bridge is 179 years old. Still going strong.

Detail of the Main Street Bridge