Carbon County to add stop signs near covered bridge

Heed the warnings, oversized vehicles are not permitted to cross the covered bridge in Lower Towamensing Township.

But Carbon County officials say that even with all the preventive measures they have put in place, they are still battling motorists who continue to attempt to cross the historic bridge with vehicles that exceed the maximum height.

On Thursday, the commissioners announced that through a joint effort with Lower Towamensing Township supervisors, the county will be installing stop signs at both entrances to the bridge in the hopes of at least stopping some people from doing extensive damage to the bridge.

“We think it is going to give us an opportunity to save the bridge,” Commissioner Thomas J. Gerhard said. “We have a lot of people traveling through there at a high rate of speed. That bridge has been damaged several times.”

Gerhard added that if the stop signs don’t deter oversized vehicles, the steel height restriction headache bars are still in place to try to stop them.

The covered bridge, located on Little Gap Road, has been the victim of many vehicle strikes.

In the past, a number of large vehicles damaged the historic bridge by continuing to drive after hitting a then wooden height restriction bar, knocking the bar down and then going through the bridge, ripping off beams as they drove.

The bridge was closed from July through Nov. 10, 2014, so crews from Professional Construction Contractors Inc. of Bethlehem could replace the open-grid steel deck and sandblast and paint the bridge.

The cost of the project, $304,000, was covered by Act 13 bridge improvement funds and Act 44 funds.

In 2015, the 155-year-old covered bridge was strengthened by the installation of steel height restriction headache bars.

Structural Metal Fabricators of Palmerton constructed the bars at a cost of $13,637.

But in 2017, the headache bars kind of stopped a motorist, who was traveling so fast they caused approximately $1,000 in damage to one of the two bars. The bar saved the bridge, though, from any further damage.