A bridge to somewhere but not absolutely certain where
Johnson Road used to cross over the Montour Railroad tracks in Mt. Pleasant Township.
The bridge that once carried Johnson Road over the railroad tracks has since been torn down and the road rerouted.
Children walk on the Johnson Road bridge crossing railroad tracks in this photo taken in 1967 or 1968.
The bridge in the current Mystery Photo must have led to somewhere, and we hoped Observer-Reporter readers might have been able to identify where that somewhere was. We think we’ve found the answer, but not with absolute certainty.
The guesses we received by telephone and email were all over the map. Tom Drewitz and Archie Alderson were sure the location was on Cove Road in South Franklin Township at the No. 4 Dam. The topography is similar, but there’s one problem: There were never any railroad tracks anywhere near that reservoir.
John Greer thought the bridge might cross Buffalo Creek in Buffalo Township, but there’s that same problem about the tracks. Kevin Paul thought it looked like the old bridge at Crawford Field in Waynesburg, and Gary Podany guessed it might be a span off Route 917 near Cokeburg.
The fact the photo was taken by our Chartiers Valley office staff in Canonsburg narrows the possibilities to two. One of those possible locations is Hahn Road off West McMurray Road in North Strabane Township. There are two bridges there – one crossing a creek and the other over the Penn Central tracks.
Rene Palombi grew up in Hendersonville and remembers playing in that area in her youth. Is it possible the photo we published last week and the other old picture taken from the tracks were not of the same bridge but of the two on Hahn Road? We can’t eliminate that possibility, but a visit to the area was not convincing; the topography did not match that of the Mystery Photo.
The more likely location turns out to be a bridge that no longer exists in Mt. Pleasant Township. Two miles from Westland along Hornhead Road, guardrails and fencing block access to where Johnson Road once crossed the Montour tracks. The road has since been rerouted. The height of the former bridge from the tracks and the topography seem to match.
We were alerted to this possibility by Dave Powell of Claysville, who grew up in Midland, and said, “What was attractive to us as kids was how high it was. When we were 14 or 15, we used to go out there on bikes and throw things like popcorn off the bridge.”
Although the location of the photo is, if not determined, at least narrowed, who the children are and why the picture was taken are still unknown. Reader Nola Elliott came up with a logical conjecture, however. She thinks that the age of the bridge made it too dangerous for school buses to cross, and that children then had to walk over the span.
Look for another Mystery Photo in next Monday’s Observer-Reporter.