Glen Hope Covered Bridge (1889)
Hickory Hill, Chester Count [38-15-02]
Finally, it seems that my project to photograph the Covered Bridges of Chester County is done!
It was a wonderful trip down to the “Southern Most” Covered Bridge in Pennsylvania.
I approached the bridge from the North side, and immediately knew I wanted to capture the windy road heading into Maryland.
Driving through the bridge, I parked on the small hill on the South side, and got out of the car.
While unpacking my gear and surveying Glen Hill, I really had to question myself on the location!
I thought I was back at Linton Stevens CB!
I did check the GPS, just to make sure…
I missed this bridge the last time I was down here in September by ‘fat fingering’ the GPS coordinates and driving into a townhouse area without any creeks, streams or rivers!
Waking into the bridge, I looked for the plaque, which is located on the Northern side of the bridge.
While taking my images of the plaque, a truck pulled up to the Southern entrance, and I signaled it go continue.
As the man passed me, he stopped, and we began to talk, and after a minute or two, he pulled over, and we began to talk more.
He introduced himself as Jamie Crouse of Crouse Auto Body in Elkton MD, and had lived in the area all his life.
As we walked and talked around the bridge, he keep telling me more about its history, such as the over weight truck being stuck inside the bridge during the 1960s.
Jamie also pointed out the char marks from the arson fire that destroyed the bridge in 1987.
Jamie continued to explain that a great of effort was made to recover as much of the original wood as possible for the rebuilding, which included Bongossi wood from Africa.
If you look closely at the floor in this picture, you will see large indentations, which were caused by the burning bails of hay and gasoline used to start the fire.
Some of the vertical posts still show charring from the fire.
He continued to say, that the two men responsible for the bridge fire are still in jail, and had also been linked to other arson attacks in the area.
On a more humorous side, he recalled that during his teenage years, two local girls visited Glenn Hope and other local covered bridges of the area, and carved “Boobless Wonder Strikes Again” on the down-creek side and “Woogie” on the up-creek side of the trusses.
We chatted a little more, and thanked him for the background info, and then he was off.
So now, where do I start my images?
The lighting was bouncing all over the place!
There was a stormy cold front passing over the area.
Short bursts of direct sun light, followed by various types of clouds, dark ones with rain and white fluffy ones.
Exposure nightmares!
But since I was doing HDR images any way, it really was not an issue.
In this image, you can see the Sun light popping in some areas, but not others.
HDR and ‘Mother Nature’ work wonders some times!
What I find most striking in this image, this the different layout of the support beams.
This was the first time that I saw the short ‘horizontal’ support beams instead of the long full-length ‘vertical’ beams of the other bridges, and certainly makes for a different visual capture!
I moved West up the Little Elk creek, and was able to capture this image looking East.
Featured Image and Photographer (November 2010) – Pennsylvania Covered Bridges
I did move further up the creek and managed to rip my Domke jacket… My first rip in the 25+ years I’ve owned the vest!
Bummer… Not a bad rip, but…
I went up about another hundred feet or so, and took some more images of the rocks surrounded by flowing water.
I still need to process those, and post them in another entry.
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Updates
10/25/2010 – Finally posted the HDR images to PhotoShelter, Flickr, RedBubble and Panoramio accounts. Also updated the Google Maps.
10/18/2012 – Notes from a talk given at the Citadel Credit Union about the Covered Bridges of the Oxford area.
After my presentation, I got to chat with several folks about the bridges, and during one conversation, I was introduced to Joe Chamberlain, who was tasked with removing and repairing the bridge after the cement truck damaged the bridge in 1968.
He not only confirmed the story, but went on to tell me, that the truck had started over the bridge, got about halfway, when the rear of the truck fell through the decking. He also questimated that there were about 8 yards of cement in the truck, at +/- 4400 pounds/yard, or 17.6 tons on a maybe 10 ton limit bridge!
Mr. Chamberlain went on to tell me, that the top of the cement truck was still above the deck level, and that he and his crew had to dig into the creek bed to lower the truck enough for them to get it out.
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