Masontown Bridge had seen history, reflected older era
In 1925, the year the Masontown Bridge was built, Mount Rushmore was just a proposal, Chicago hosted the World’s Fair and the Pittsburgh Pirates won the World Series.
It was also the year “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald was published, John Scopes was arrested, tried and convicted for teaching evolution and the Grand Ole Opry premiered as the WSM Barn Dance on WSM Radio in Nashville. In the motoring world, Chrysler Corp. was founded (Lee Iacocca, who revived the company in the 1980s, was just 8 months old at that time) and the term “motel” was coined by Arthur Heinman who opened the Motel Inn in San Luis Obispo, Calif.Nathan Holth of Michigan, who maintains the website www.historicbridges.org, said he would have loved to have seen the Masontown Bridge preserved.
“It’s really an intricate bridge. To me, it’s a geometric art. The bridge that’s next to it just looks like a slab of concrete,” Holth said.
Holth said the Masontown Bridge hasn’t been designated as an historic bridge because there were older bridges of the same style, but many of those have been demolished or are slated for demolition as well. It is a truss bridge, similar to the Charleroi-Monessen and Donora-Webster bridges.
“If they had considered it historic, they would have had to do a review to try to save the bridge,” Holth said. “They could have built a bridge next to the existing bridge and created a one-way couplet.”
Holt also suggested that the bridge could have been used for pedestrian and bicycle traffic. The new bridge will not have a pedestrian walkway.
Holth said Pennsylvania-style metal truss bridges were fairly common in this region, but unlike other area bridges built around the same time that were riveted together, the Masontown Bridge is held together with metal pins, an older style of construction.
“The Brownsville (Inter-County) Bridge will be one of the last Pennsylvania truss pinned bridges. That one is recognized as historic,” Holth said.
One of the reasons the state Department of Transportation is replacing the Masontown Bridge is its narrowness, according to Steve Hoyer, a PennDOT bridge engineer.
“For that structure type, having a bridge that narrow isn’t that desirable for the amount of traffic it carries. What you would have if you rehabilitated it, it really wouldn’t meet the traffic needs. On the Greene County side you have a four-lane road that went into that little funnel across the river. When you have that much traffic and truck traffic, it’s not desirable.”
Prior to 1925 construction of the Masontown Bridge, a ferry operated near the site. Jane McCann Walsh, a descendant of the ferry operators, said the ferry was founded in 1769 by James Alexander Flenniken and Henry J. Jennings. Originally called the Republican Ferry, the name was changed to the McCann Ferry to honor the family that ran the ferry.
“It just became colloquially known as the McCann Ferry because they operated it on both sides of the (Monongahela) river,” Walsh said. “I’ve been told that in that area there were what was called Indian stepping stones and when the water was low you could cross without using a ferry.”
Walsh said such dry spells may have been what led to some of ferryman David McCann’s children being listed on the poor list in 1808 and again in the 1820s, meaning that their education was paid for by the state.