This is a story about a bridge.
Over a century ago, before there was a four-lane U.S. 50, even before there was a two-lane U.S. 50, traveling between Vincennes and Washington necessarily meant crossing the West Fork of the White River using what, today, is referred to in the county's inventory as Bridge 45.
When it opened in 1903 and for decades thereafter, depending on from which side of the river you were coming, the 422 foot long, 15 foot wide three-span iron bridge with its wooden deck was popularly known as either the Old Washington Bridge (if you were a Knox Countian heading east) or the Old Vincennes Bridge (if you hailed from Daviess County and were on your way west.)
In Knox County the road leading up to the bridge is still designated as Washington Road, while on the other side of the river it's labeled as Vincennes Road.
Traffic across the span, no matter what it is called, has for years been heavy; a traffic count in the spring of 2005 showed 300 vehicles crossing it each weekday, with weekend traffic only slightly below that mark.
A recent visit to the bridge turned up a traffic count of 19 vehicles within a 45-minute timeframe, this despite a 3-ton weight limit.
More than a dozen years ago, when the bridge was in such a sorry state of disrepair as to lead officials on both banks to seriously consider tearing it down and replacing it with a structure capable of accommodating newer, much-larger farm equipment, preservationists came to town to try to convince both counties to consider an alternative plan.
They pointed out that the iron-truss bridge was one of only a few such structures left standing in Indiana, and one of only a very few still handling vehicular traffic; most of the remaining iron-truss bridges had long ago been converted over for pedestrian and bicycle use only.
In the mid-1980s, according to a survey undertaken by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology, Knox County was home to 77 iron bridges, a number that had declined by almost half a decade later.
Cost of building a new bridge (including tearing down the old one), was estimated at somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.5 million with the county's share around $280,000, a pricey undertaking at a time when Knox County's finances weren't it the best condition.
In stepped Jim Barker, president of J.A. Barker Engineering Inc. of Bloomington. His initial approach was to try to convince the county commissioners to keep the bridge and convert it, too, for pedestrian and bicycle traffic,
But the idea of having to spend $280,000 to build a new bridge and to pay to restore the existing bridge wasn't appealing to the commissioners.
Barker then pitched a plan to restore the existing bridge with the help of a federal grant. The cost to the county, the persistent preservationist pointed out, would only be about $140,000 — possibly much less — and while the width would remain 15 feet, a fully-rehabilitated bridge would nonetheless have a weight-load of 15 tons, a considerable improvement from the 3-ton weight limit then in place.
(The low-load stipulation, which is still in place, prevents most emergency vehicles such as fire trucks from using the bridge.)
The work to be undertaken included replacing pins and the lateral bracing, cleaning and painting the surface, resurfacing and improving the approaches on both sides and replacing the railing along its three spans.
Barker estimated the cost of the project to be between $750,000 and $790,000 and, when all the work was completed, the bridge would be expected to last another 50 years.
Doing the math, the commissioners opted to spend $1,400 (his fee) to have Barker pursue the federal grant.
Early the next year, while the county was awaiting word on the federal-preservation grant, the bridge had to be closed for 60 days when a portion of the wooden deck collapsed.
CLR Inc., a local firm, was hired to install a steel deck at a cost to the county of $80,000.
In the meantime, the bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places, increasing the county's chances of receiving the federal grant, and the necessary environmental and engineering studies were undertaken.
And then, for about two years, the project stalled.
While a $1.75 million federal grant had been awarded to the county for the project, it was never spent on it. Instead, the money was first reallocated toward a proposed connector-road between Indiana 67 and U. S. 41 to facilitate the hauling of coal from mines at Oaktown to the new Duke Energy power plant at Edwardsport.
When that project fell by the wayside, the money was used for other projects, not the Old Washington Bridge.
By 2014, with the exception of the new deck, the bridge was basically in the same condition it was a decade earlier.
“There have been a number of complications on this bridge project through the years,” then highway superintendent Ron Cardinal said at the start of the year.
Included in the setbacks was a fire at Barker's Bloomington office in which all the design work was lost.
Bids were finally let on the project during this past summer, and last month highway superintendent Donnie Mize reported that only one bid was returned — for $1.57 million, twice the cost estimate Barker had given 10 years ago.
The county rebid the project, and Mize reported to the county council this week that CLR (which had replaced the deck) had submitted a bid for $745,000.
And, he said, the Indiana Department of Transportation has agreed to pay more than $500,000 towards the cost; INDOT had back in 2006 recommended the county use the original federal grant money on the connector-road and other projects.
Knox County share of the project would be $101,000.
Mize felt confident that, finally, the project would move forward.
“I'll be honest, I don't know that much about the history of this project other than it's been on the books for a long, long time,” he said. “But I know folks are going to be glad when it's finally completed.”
When, exactly, such completion might occur is still a question.
Mize said he was communicating with INDOT to see just how quickly work might start and hoped to have an answer next month.