I crossed it the first time when I was three days old back in 1961. When I was in grade school I used to cross it a few times a week and have nightmares about it falling under the weight of our car. When I started taking serious landscape photos a few years ago, I looked at it as a work of art and a marvel of turn-of-the-century architecture, but never photographed it much because I just never imagined it not being there. Now in two years it will be gone. There's a folder in my photos labeled, "Minnie Bridge" if you want to see what it looks like.
The Minnie Bridge connects the hollow of Minnie with Route 20 in mid central WV. It was built around the turn of the century but I am not sure the exact year because the DOH has been working on it and removed the plaque. For the past few weeks they have been resurfacing it and it's scheduled to be replaced in 2010. That will be the second icon from my childhood demolished, the other being the nearby mill and dam, which I never had a chance to photograph. This time I'm not going to let that happen. I'm going to photograph that bridge from every angle possible, in all types of weather and across all the seasons over the next two years. Hopefully a few of them will be good.
