Description
The 1,660-foot (510 m) long tied-arch bridge carries four lanes of concurrent highways I-70, US 40 and US 250 over the main channel of the Ohio River between Wheeling Island and downtown Wheeling, West Virginia. The bridge is the easternmost portion of a 1-mile (1.6 km) long chain of elevated structures spanning Wheeling Creek in Ohio, the Ohio River back channel, Wheeling Island, and the main channel. To the east of the bridge after an interchange in downtown Wheeling, I-70 and US 250 enter the Wheeling Tunnel. Besides the Wheeling Suspension Bridge, the Fort Henry Bridge is the only fixed connection from Wheeling Island to mainland West Virginia. The bridge is named after Fort Henry, which in turn was named after Patrick Henry, the governor of Virginia Territory at the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War.
Truck traffic is prohibited from using the Wheeling Suspension Bridge and must take the Fort Henry Bridge to cross between downtown Wheeling and Wheeling Island. The bridge is owned and maintained by the State of West Virginia. Every year, the West Virginia Department of Transportation (WVDOT) conducts a series of surveys on its highways in the state to measure traffic volume. This is expressed in terms of average annual daily traffic (AADT), which is a measure of traffic volume for any average day of the year. In 2009, WVDOT calculated that 60,070 vehicles used the Fort Henry Bridge over the main channel of the Ohio River. This represents a 334 percent increase in traffic from 1956, the first year traffic data was published, when 18,000 vehicles used the bridge.
Read more about this topic: Fort Henry Bridge
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the sea-floor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)