New Fieldale bridge opens
Ribbon-cutting ceremony draws a crowd
Traffic began crossing the newly built Fieldale bridge Tuesday, and passersby can see a portion of the old bridge preserved in a ballpark nearby.
“It’s as if the big brother is watching the little brother, and both are pleased with the other,” Debra Buchanan, chairman of the Henry County Board of Supervisors, said Tuesday during a dedication ceremony to mark the completion of the $2.4 million bridge construction project.
More than 100 people, including state and local officials, attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark the opening of the new bridge, which crosses the Smith River in Fieldale.
Former Henry County supervisor Mike Seidle shuttled the first group across the bridge toward the village in his 1925 Ford. Doug Stegall, co-chairman of the Fieldale Heritage Festival, was the first to cross headed in the opposite direction.
Richard Caywood, district administrator for the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), said the bridge project was “finished on time and on budget.”
However, traffic crossing the bridge out of Fieldale cannot turn left until a new gate and flashing lights are installed at nearby railroad tracks, Caywood said. He estimated that will take two or three weeks.
In preparing for the trip to Fieldale from Richmond, Caywood said he used online maps and saw photos of the former bridge still intact over the Smith River.
“As an engineer, there’s nothing we love better than bridges, and there’s nothing we like less” than replacing old or outdated ones, he said. The old bridge was built in 1931.
Del. Ward Armstrong, D-Collinsville, said “it was music to my ears” to learn the bridge project was on time and on budget, and he hopes it “will carry people to and from Fieldale” for many years.
Dana Martin, the Salem District representative on the Commonwealth Transportation Board, said the bridge is jokingly referred to as “Dot’s Bridge” in his family.
That has been the case since his sister, Dot, ran a 1964 Country Squire Sedan Wagon “into the railing” of the former bridge.
That bridge, he noted, “was rickety then.”
“We all loved the old Fieldale Bridge” and what it represented for the community, “but we also knew what the engineers told us: Its future use could endanger” residents, Buchanan said. The new bridge “stands as a monument” to the old one, she added.
Construction of the new bridge began in April 2009, “but as we all know, the actual work on this bridge began much earlier with community meetings, planning meetings and discussions of a path forward,” she said.
The ribbon cutting “is an event that the Fieldale community has anxiously awaited ever since the construction began ... and I can tell you, we are thrilled that this day has finally arrived,” Buchanan said.
State Sen. Roscoe Reynolds, D-Ridgeway, said the new bridge “is an additional tool to be used as” economic development takes place and “as Fieldale continues to recover” from job losses.
“I want to thank anybody who had a part in making this bridge a reality,” Reynolds said, adding, “Congratulations to the Fieldale community.”