It’s a simple statue, in period costume, and telling us more than you might think. It’s something you don’t see everyday, and has a good story with it. Can you identify this Mystery Photo? Send along your ideas to elliott@brack.net, and include your hometown.
Readers have been leaving it to the regular spotters to identify many recent photos, as was the case last week. George Graf of Palmyra, Va., Lou Camerio of Lilburn and Allan Peel of San Antonio, Tex. all recognized the Bailey Island Bridge, Harpswell, Cumberland County, Maine. Graf told us it “….was designed by Llewellyn N. Edwards, completed in 1928 and carries traffic across Casco Bay on Maine State Route 24.” The photo was made by Elliott Brack.
Peel added: “It is also called the Cribstone Bridge. This rather unique bridge connects Orr’s Island to Bailey Island, about 14 miles south of the junction of Route U.S. 1 and State Route 24. It has much back history. From a historical perspective, the fishermen who lived on Bailey Island had long wanted a bridge to connect their island with Orr’s Island, but the town council turned down their requests. However, after the Maine Legislature passed a law to allow the state and counties to fund bridge construction, a plan emerged to build the bridge, completed in 1928.
“Design of the 1,150-foot-long bridge was complicated by the tides in the area known as Will’s Gut. It was decided to build a cribstone bridge, and modeled after a design that originated in Scotland. The design used granite slabs as cribstones, acquired from local quarries in nearby Yarmouth, Maine. The granite slabs were sufficiently heavy to withstand the buffeting of wind and wave and the open cribbing or cellular construction permitted the tide to ebb and flow freely without increasing the normal tidal current to any appreciable degree.
“The bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and to the Historical Civil Engineering Landmark in 1984, which at the time, indicated that only 74 cribstone bridges remained throughout the world. To better understand just how durable this bridge design is, consider that throughout its history, the Bailey Island Bridge has been closed only once because of weather and related safety concerns. A severe southeast storm on January 9, 1978 packed winds in excess of 75 mph and in confluence with both a five-year tide and an annual spring tide pushed the tide peak to over 13-feet high. Despite all of this, the bridge stood firm and functioned as designed in allowing the strong storm surges to readily flow through the structure virtually unobstructed!”
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Bob Foreman of Grayson reminds us that August 7 was National Lighthouse Day, honoring the beacons of light that for hundreds of years symbolized safety and security for ships and boats at sea. At one time, the beacon of light could be found across almost all of America’s shorelines. Yep, look for more mystery lighthouses in future editions of GwinnettForum. After all, readers send ‘em in.–eeb
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