The Newtown Pentacle

Monday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Pictured is the Veteran’s Memorial Bridge, spanning the Ohio River, and it carries Route 22 between Ohio’s Steubenville and West Virginia’s Weirton. This shot was captured on the Ohio side of the river.

Specifically speaking, this shot was captured March 30th, as are all of the photos you’re going to see today and tomorrow, just in case you’re wondering why spring hasn’t sprung in them.

For the entire time I’ve lived in Pittsburgh, one has passed by highway signs offering road connections to Weirton, West Virginia. I’ve walked on ‘rail trails’ that claim to end in Weirton. I’ve had Weirton on my mind. I looked it up, and ‘wow.’

The realization, that Weirton and Steubenville are only about fifty or so highway minutes away from the driveway where my Toyota dwells… well, that demanded some action.

The two communities parallel each other across the river, as a note.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Today’s shots were captured along the Steubenville shoreline.

Purely scouting, this effort, but as usual I had combed through Google Maps looking for potential ‘POV’s’ that coincided with places where I might be able to park the car. First stop was a gas station called ‘Mr Fuel,’ where I could get my bearings and buy a Gatorade.

There’s a big old industrial plant there, which seems to be in use these days as a waste transfer station.

The architectural design of these industrial buildings, as I’ve been learning, suggests ‘Coal.’ Don’t know that for sure, but they sort of fit in with the style of the post-coal related structures one has learned to recognize back in Pittsburgh. That peaked pattern of brick work on the mill building above is the ‘tell.’

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I opted to visit the Ohio side first, as the Google Maps based remote survey of the ‘zone’ I committed suggested that there would a larger number of potential points of view, couple with fairly easy car parking for when I was shooting. I should mention that people in this part of the country just park wherever the ‘eff they want, and I’m likely the only driver in the area who is concerned about such matters.

Thank you, NYPD, for ingraining a fear of parking tickets and ruinously expensive towing into my soul for the rest of time.

First visit was nearby the ‘Historic Fort Steuben’ site. They seemed closed, but their parking lot was open. Yay.

From there, I was intrigued by the shuttered 1905 vintage ‘Market Street Bridge’ connecting the two states.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Apparently, this bridge is West Virginia’s problem, and a replacement project is in its early stages. This bridge was closed in 2023, as it’s considered structurally deficient – even for pedestrian use – in Ohio, and West Virginia. Wow.

Steubenville has an interesting historic residential district nearby, which I drove through but didn’t photograph at all. Next time.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Scouting missions like this one are about ‘finding’ interesting subjects for future photographic effort, and are not really about ‘getting busy.’

That 1871 vintage Jefferson County Courthouse, for instance, caught my eye. The only pedestrian activity I observed in Steubenville were people entering and leaving that building, as a note.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

There was an industrial park along the river which terminated at a marina for launching privately owned boats.

You pass under a huge (supposedly quite historic too) rail bridge, drive past a little park area and then a light industrial area, whereupon the road ends at a marina. The first shot in today’s post is actually from that position, and yeah – I did set up the tripod, and used filters and everything, for that one.

Back tomorrow with the other side.

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