Bridges and Ferries, Part 2

C&D Canal’s Old Bridges and Ferries, Part 2

Overhead Bridge Construction, circa 1946

Construction of Chesapeake City’s current overhead bridge began about 1946. I remember watching it go up as I sat in class. In fact, the commotion was so interesting that I didn’t get much school work done during the whole process. I saw it all, from the razing of the houses in its path on the South Side to the tightening of the last nut that connects the last piece of steel. The sight of the derricks delicately swinging the beams into place, the concrete trucks constantly moving to and fro, and the sounds of clanking steel, loud staccato riveting, and roaring vehicles are still vivid in my mind.

In the evenings, after the construction crews left—leaving their trucks, cranes, compressors, and dozers skulking haphazardly about the site—my buddy, Junior, and I would run around, on foot and on our bicycles, all over that bridge as it progressed from ground level till the time the south side section was connected to the North Side section. Oh, the guards would sometimes harass us, but we almost always out-smarted them.

I remember one evening, however, shortly after dark, when Junior and I were riding our bikes up the unfinished bridge. The roadway span from the South Side ascended to almost the middle of the canal, about 100 feet or so from the ascending roadway span from the North Side. The only things keeping us from dropping 200 feet into the canal were a yellow wooden barrier and a thin white rope. Junior and I would ride our bikes around the barrier, crouch under the rope, walk gingerly to the edge, and peer down to the water far below.

Then we would climb the steel girders that hung over the water and look out across at the breathless view. More than once we would peer down into an active smoke stack of a ship steaming through below. On this particular evening, however, as we labored up the incline on our bikes, we heard a man yelling at us from above. He was flashing a light and shouting: “Hey, you kids! You’ll be arrested for this!”

He was coming after us, so we took off down that bridge at breakneck speed. We spun down the bridge bank, down into the road under the bridge, and across Saint Augustine Road. Then we tossed our bikes along the hedgerow, ran through Stanley Stevens' over-grown field, and into the swamp south of town. We crouched down beneath the cattails and hid there for quite some time. We surely didn’t want to be arrested. We realized later that the pursuer was just some old man hired to guard the bridge. But that was one time he did a good job of scaring us ornery kids.

        When the bridge was finished an opening ceremony was held on the South Side. Children were released from classes and most of the townspeople were there to watch the ribbon-cutting and applaud as the first car drove over. But the event marked the end of the ferry era, and the high, town-dividing, town-ignoring span can’t compare with the enchantment of riding the ferries.