Tuesday, May 21, 2024

Black River Bridge North of Wellington – Part 2

The Black River Bridge on Route 58. The view is looking south.
Note the billboard for Buckeye Beer.

Almost exactly a year after the bridge on Route 58 over the Black River north of Wellington was renovated, it was announced that it was finally going to be replaced.

Here's the article making the announcement in the Lorain Journal on March 17, 1954.

A day later, the paper ran a photo of the bridge.

A little over a year later, the replacement of the bridge began. Here's the blurb about the closing of Route 58 that ran in the Journal on May 12, 1955.
The actual demolition of the bridge was covered in two Journal photo features, one that ran on July 13, 1955 and the other a little over a week later on July 23, 1955.
The new bridge was constructed to the west of the old one. You can see the location of the old bridge relative to the new one in this photo (courtesy of Dennis Lamont). The view is looking south.
This aerial view shows the old bridge route in red, superimposed over the newer bridge route circa 1959.
And here's a modern view of the new bridge, looking south. Sorry, no Buckeye Beer billboard.


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UPDATE 
You can see a little bit of the old Route 58 pavement at the far right of this photo, which is looking north towards the bridge.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So, the three or four houses that exist today just east of the current bridge are actually on the original Rt58. It's basically the same thing they did with Middle Ridge Rd and Old Middle Ridge Rd in Amherst.

Dennis Thompson said...

Yes. If you look on Google Maps it is very clear that the driveways for those 3 houses ends on a short section of the old road.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/19015+OH-58,+Wellington,+OH+44090/@41.2053701,-82.2163511,154m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m15!1m8!3m7!1s0x883a08489fa13bc1:0xd7b12a7d923ff840!2sMerriam+Rd,+Pittsfield+Township,+OH+44090!3b1!8m2!3d41.2100867!4d-82.2408989!16s%2Fg%2F1hhhp7xvt!3m5!1s0x883a0827766f4015:0x84b847d7c81d62bd!8m2!3d41.205619!4d-82.2158204!16s%2Fg%2F11c2ckhn31?entry=ttu