Published: July 22, 2008 05:00 pm            

Old span was worth saving

Former Cass County Highway Engineer Jodi Coblentz deserves a pat on the back for the completion of the Lewisburg Bridge.

The project wound up being one of the last ones Coblentz completed as county engineer. She resigned last month to take a job with the Indiana Department of Transportation.

Coblentz turned out, though, for a ribbon-cutting and ice cream social to celebrate the opening of the rehabilitated span. In her remarks to those gathered for the festivities, Coblentz noted that one of her first tasks when she joined the county in 1999 was to assess the old bridge. She knew then, she said, that the structure would soon need significant work.

There were those who thought the bridge was a lost cause when a portion of it collapsed in 2005, but Coblentz was determined to save it.

The project clearly had its frustrations. The weather failed to cooperate, and the work wound up taking more than six months longer than scheduled. The result, though, is a beautiful span designed to last at least another 50 years.

The bridge was built in 1913 by Daniel B. Luten, a famed bridge designer who taught at Purdue University.

The structure was one of about 14,000 bridges built worldwide using Luten’s designs. The Lewisburg Bridge is one of about 50 remaining in Indiana. Cass County is home to three of them. The others are the Third Street Bridge over the Eel River and the Cass Station Road bridge over the Wabash.

As it turned out, saving the Lewisburg Bridge cost the county about the same as it would have spent to tear it down and start over. Total cost to complete the project was just over $2 million, Coblentz said. County funds covered $250,000 of that.

In the end, though, saving a historic bridge seems worth the effort.

Congratulations to Coblentz and the contractors on completion of a successful project.

– Pharos-Tribune, Logansport, and Kokomo Tribune

        

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