LOUDONVILLE — Before September, the Wally Road Bridge a few miles south of Loudonville was limited to one lane and had a weight limit of 10,000 pounds.
That is a weight limit that most passenger cars can abide by, but semi trucks and school buses often weigh much more than 10,000 pounds.
“That old bridge was in bad shape,” Holmes County Engineer Christopher Young said.
So in September, construction crews demolished the bridge and began work on a new $9.5 million Spellacy Covered Bridge funded by state and federal grants. Three months later, the old bridge is no more and foundations for the new bridge have been laid, according to a livestream of the construction site.
A rendering of the new covered bridge.
The bridge will be closed until at least Sept. 19, 2023, according to a press release from the Mohican Visitors Bureau.
In the meantime, construction crews will attempt to minimize any disruptions to the river traffic that flows through the site, and will use flaggers to deter kayaks and canoes when construction is underway, according to the release.
The new covered bridge isn’t the only improvement coming to the Mohican River. Organizers of the Mohican Greenway Corridor project, which seeks to revitalize the river’s infrastructure, are gearing up for phase one of their improvements to the Mohican Valley Trail.
The plan is to install a trail running north from the new covered bridge to the Ashland and Holmes County line, Young said.
The Mohican Greenway Corridor project started three years ago when county engineers from Ashland, Holmes, and Knox came together to fix up the Mohican River Valley.
“It is a multi-faceted project to widen roads, provide public access to canoes, provide internet access, and many other things other than road improvements. That defines what the Mohican Greenway project (is),” Ashland County Engineer Edward Meixner said.
Bidding for the trail project will be early next year and construction will be completed in summer 2023, Young said.
