Got that Wheeling feeling

Back on the East Coast for awhile. Gorging on seafood like there’s no tomorrow. Putting the final touches on the cottage so we can rent it out long-term for a couple of years.

On the way here from Illinois we stopped and spent the night in Wheeling, West Virginia. It was an exquisite summer evening and our room overlooked a tranquil Ohio River. Around the corner from our hotel, we came across this lovely bridge. I had never known about it before, but came to learn it was built before the Civil War, dedicated in 1850. When it was built—to open the Louisiana Purchase to settlement via the storied National Road—it was the longest bridge in the world. That it still serves us 150 years later is a testament to ingenuity and a can-do public spirit. I couldn’t help contrast that to today’s money-wasting, over-engineered, failing-after-one-year “Big Dig.”

We walked across the bridge into a place called Wheeling Island. Everyone we met there kept assuring us, even though we never asked, that we were indeed on an island, and that it was a great place to live. I remain unconvinced about the latter because they had a wall on their city hall painted proudly with marks indicating how high the floods had been in 1946, 1958, 1963, 1975, 1977, 1982—you get the picture. I was glad to get downashore the next day.

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