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Some of you may know, and others may not, but I am a Bridge and Structural Engineer by trade. The A&E firm I work for maintains a contract with the Federal Highways Admin and National Park Service to inspect quite a few of the park and federal structures. Last week I was sent with a team to the Arlington-Memorial Bridge over the Potomoc river. The bridge was built between '27 and '33 and is comprised of 8 large concrete and stone arches, one center steel arch that used to be a lift span, and two smaller arches at each end over GWMP and Ohio Drive. While we were inspecting the bridge, I stumbled across all sorts of Graffiti from when the structure was built, but the one that caught my eye was from the 176th Infantry in January of 1942. After talking with some of the park people and doing some reasearch on my own, evidently the bridge was used for tunnel and confined space training during the early part of the war. It was also planned to be used as an emergency bunker. Unfortunately, due to the design of the structure, you cannot traverse from one end of the other through the inside only. I don't know if you guys find it as intersting as I do, but I thought it was pretty cool. The inside of this bridge ranges from extremely spacious to down right claustrophobic.
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