Linton Stevens Covered Bridge (1886)
Hickory Hill, Chester County [38-15-03]
It was another beautiful day in Chester County.
I was able to get everybody out of the house early, so I could then spend down the road capturing more bridges.
This bridge is located in Hickory Hill, which is southwest of where I live, so I took Rt. 1 South and headed towards Oxford.
Once near Oxford, I let the GPS guide me through the various small back-roads as I wound myself towards the bridge.
As I started down a small little hill on Kings Row Road, I saw Linton Stevens in front of me.
About 100 feet above the bridge, I pulled off to the side of the road, parked and began to look for potential shots.
Grabbing my gear, I headed off in search of the main bridge sign to get further details.
I found the bridge plaque on the north side of the bridge.
Setting up my tripod, I took my first images.
From there, I remembered, that during my initial scouting and the walk towards the entrance, there was a shot I wanted to capture on the left side, so I moved the camera and tripod into position, and set up to do another series of HDR captures.
While I was setting up the shot, I noticed on the far side, an older woman out walking her dog. I waited until she and her dog had entered the bridge and started my first captures. It was easy to locate them in the bridge by the echoing sounds of the dogs claws hitting the wood floor. Once they were through, we exchanged “Good morning”‘s, and they continue their walk.
I moved closer to the bridge, where I could exaggerate the length and also capture the reflection in the water.
After that was done, I went back to my car and drove it through the bridge parking on the other side.
I setup my camera to do a long interior shot looking north. What surprised me at this stage of the game, was that some of my exposures were pushing 30 seconds, which seemed unusual for the brightness of the day.
Once I was done with the Interior shot, I moved around to the right side of the bridge to look for a way to crawl underneath, which was easy because of the small little path, that others had used before.
As I started my investigation, I was startled, to see a seemingly “fresh paint” on the iron beams that supported the bridge.
The light sand color of the paint was going to help reflect light into this very dark scene.
I also noticed some very fresh red graffiti painted on the side of one of the main girders, but unfortunately, I did not have a wide enough angle lens to capture the whole scene, but I was able to move easily to the center and capture the following image. (I do have an additional shot trying to show the graffiti, and the artist that left their mark, also dated their artwork as 7/20/2011, just a mere two months ago.)
From here, I started moving downstream to get along side view of the bridge.
As I waded through the water, there was a line of rocks acting as a small dam, that had caught a branch and leaves that were now blocking water from floating freely. I move the branch out-of-the-way, and then there was a sudden rush of water.
I finally set up approximately 150 feet downstream, and captured my final full-length view of the bridge.
I took a few more shots as I headed back upstream towards my car, where I collapsed my tripod, and headed off to the next bridge: Rudolph & Arthur (1886).
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Cross Links
Updates
10/18/2012 – Notes from a talk given at the Citadel Credit Union about the Covered Bridges of the Oxford area.
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