Two full years after the Ohio Department of Transportation condemned the Interurban Bridge near the Roche de Boeuf in Waterville it still stands above Maumee River boaters.
“As far as what future mitigation plans might be happening on the site, we have not finalized those plans,” Kelsie Hoagland, a spokesman at the Ohio Department of Transportation’s district office in Bowling Green, said Wednesday. “We are still working with consulting parties and we are really early in that phase.”
Delay to the decrepit landmark’s removal, involving red tape stemming from intricacies of potential demolition over a river that must be cleared by the Army Corps of Engineers, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, means that the work should now be pushed back to 2025 from an original 2024 schedule, Ms. Hoagland said.
“There are a number of different governing bodies that participate in this process, and we are not fully complete with the permits,” she said.
In the meantime, stakeholder meetings with what ODOT describes as “consulting parties” are beginning to be held, with the most recent one taking place in late October at the Waterville branch library.
“We gave them some homework, like these are some ideas of things to get your brain exercising,” Ms. Hoagland said, indicating the meeting went well and more meetings are planned in the new year.
The spokesman said the list of consulting parties includes the Lucas and Wood county engineers’ offices and Metroparks Toledo. The old bridge’s south end lies within Wood County’s Middleton Township, while its north end lands within the boundaries of Farnsworth Metropark.
Native American tribes, like the Miami and Shawnee who have considered the Roche de Boeuf rock itself to be sacred for hundreds of years, are also being consulted, along with the Ohio History Center, the Waterville Historical Society, the city of Waterville, and nearby property owners.
Originally constructed in 1908, the bridge was a part of an interurban railway that served the Waterville area for nearly three decades. At more than 1,200 feet, the span was once considered among the world’s longest earth-filled, concrete reinforced arch bridges, according to Metroparks Toledo.
Its track was taken up around 1937 and the Ohio Department of Transportation acquired the property in 1941, after which it was used temporarily for highway traffic to bypass the nearby Waterville Bridge after that structure was damaged and wartime materials shortages precluded immediate repair.
The bridge has been idle since 1948, and since then large sections of its concrete have fallen into the river and trees have grown up from its earthen fill.
It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. According to the Waterville Historical Society, for a brief period in the late 1970s a group of citizens were trying to go through the necessary processes to take the structure in the direction of a similarly designed arch bridge in western Massachusetts, known as the “Bridge of Flowers,” that was converted from a trolley bridge to a footbridge and garden in the 1920s.
But after several dead ends, the transportation department in 1983 formally declared it no longer a bridge because it performed no transportation function.
The hazard to boaters and wildlife of falling concrete attracted renewed attention about five years ago. ODOT responded by placing the bridge up for auction, but when no bidder met its deadline for submitting restoration plans, the state designated it in December, 2021, for demolition.
Some, including a reader who wrote into The Blade’s Reader’s Forum in 2021, feel that totally clearing the bridge would give the Roche de Boeuf rock the center stage it deserves.
Its name meaning “beef rock” or “buffalo rock” in French, the Roche de Boeuf, a limestone outcrop in the river, was an important landmark for European explorers and local native tribes in centuries past. Gen. Anthony Wayne even used the rock as a landmark by which to set up his camp ahead of the Battle of Fallen Timbers.
The bridge’s construction controversially included dynamiting about one-third of the rock to create a support for one of the northernmost arches.
Jim Stoma, a Waterville resident and former board member at the Waterville Historical Society, described the bridge as a work of art, noting that Waterville’s city seal includes it as an icons, so saving any portion of it would be ideal.
“They had talked about leaving one column there between the Lucas County side and Roche de Boeuf rock,” Mr. Stoma said, pointing out that the pillar supported by the rock would be a strong candidate to remain so as not to damage the rock any further. “If you have to tear the thing down, that is the least you could do, or even leave one piece on each side of the river.”
But Mr. Stoma, who said he missed the concerned-party meeting in October but hopes more such meetings will be held in the future, acknowledged the falling-concrete hazard could persist if the structure remains. The ruins would naturally attract curious boaters, he said.
“We have a couple paintings in the historical society of the rock itself and how much it has been changed when they added the concrete pillar to the edge of the rock to make the bridge,” Mr. Stoma said. “Are they going to be able to improve all that again? I don’t think they will. I think they will just knock the pillar out and leave the rock there.”
Waterville Mayor Tim Pedro, who has been involved in discussions about the bridge’s fate since he took office in 2020, said that like Mr. Stoma, he would personally favor saving as much of the bridge as is feasible.
“For me if there was a way to save a couple arches on each side, that would be worth some consideration,” Mr. Pedro said. “My overall thought would be once it is gone, it is gone. If there is any interest to do something, probably in the first six months of ‘24 would be the time to decide.”
The mayor said he expects the subject to come up during any of several meetings Waterville city officials would normally hold with ODOT officials during the course of next year for project updates, and ultimately a decision will likely result from cost estimates.
“I think there are still some people here locally that might like to have one more opportunity to study what [the bridge] could be,” Mr. Pedro said, noting that there are three schools of thought on the matter, including taking the bridge down, rehabbing the structure completely, or leaving up just one or two arches.
ODOT in the late 2010s estimated demolition cost at $2 million and restoration at $16 million.
“I think once people realize that it could be coming down in ‘25, they might refocus and say, ‘Is there anything we can do to save this?’ ” the mayor said.
First Published December 17, 2023, 2:30 p.m.
