Bridge to history:
Goshen Creek span

will retain original design
By Scott Nicholson
nicholson@wataugademocrat.com

Oh, gosh, the Goshen Creek Bridge will be changed forever – but not too much.

The Goshen Bridge on the Blue Ridge Parkway is currently undergoing repairs, but only a few elements of the historic structure will be lost.

The existing features have been recorded and archived, in both older and newer technologies, to ensure that the bridge will in some ways remain just as it was when built after World War II.

“There is no other bridge like it on the Blue Ridge Parkway,” said Gary Johnson, chief of planning and professional services for the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Rock parapets rise nearly a hundred feet from Goshen Creek below, with distinctive stonework that Johnson said would be undisturbed by the construction. However, the picket-style railing will be replaced, and asphalt will no longer cover concrete on the road surface.

“They’re not doing anything with stone work at all,” Johnson said. “The concrete deck has deteriorated to the point where there are places on the edge where you can actually see through the deck. The entire concrete deck will be replaced and the bridge rail will be replaced with a three-rail bridge rail system. The only difference will be the rail is no longer picket style.”

The distinctive bridge is most often experienced by those traveling above it on the parkway. It can be seen below from George Hayes Road, which runs parallel to Goshen Creek, and can be viewed from a few stretches of Bamboo Road.

“The underneath has unique steel structure that will be cleaned and repainted that will take it back to the way it was when originally constructed,” Johnson said. “It’s pretty visible from down below.”

The Goshen Creek Bridge was constructed in 1948. The design elements to get the most complete make-over are the vertical picket rails which are integrated into bridge deck concrete and curbing, which are no longer deemed crashworthy by the engineers of the Federal Highways Administration.

The park service and North Carolina State Historic Preservation agreed to extensively record the project for posterity. The current bridge will be extensively photographed and a video taken of the bridge approaching it for from both directions at 10, 25, and 45 miles per hour. These records will be stored in the archives of the Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina Division of Archives and History/State Historic Preservation Office and the Eastern Federal Land Highway Division office in Sterling, Va.

“Anytime that we’re going to make changes to a historic structure in the National Park Service, we’re required to do photographing recording of that,” Johnson said. “It used to be just still photographs, but in this project we decided, since you experience this bridge in motion as you’re driving across it, we’d show what the bridge used to be like as you’re traveling.”

The bridges reconstruction project will include a new concrete deck, replacement of the historic bridge rail system, removal of asphalt bridge deck paving, including replacement with a modified concrete overlay, and the addition of a new modern guardrail.

“That section is now closed off and a detour is in place, and essentially the project is underway,” Johnson said of a 6.3 mile stretch of the parkway.

The detour will begin for visitor traveling south at milepost 285.5, Bamboo Gap. These visitors will follow state road (SR) 1514 Bamboo Road to Deerfield Road, following the detour signs along U.S. 321 south of Boone and connecting back to the Parkway at milepost 291.8.

Parkway visitors traveling north will begin the detour at milepost 291.8, intersection of U.S. 321, following the detour signs along U.S. 321 to SR 1514, Deerfield Road to Bamboo Road which will bring them back to the Parkway at milepost 285.5. The total detour is about eight miles and work is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

More information about the project, including archival photographs, can be found at http://www.virtualblueridge.com/parkway/history/goshen-creek-bridge.asp.