Cross That Bridge When You Come To It

I made a big, fast journey down to, well, I keep wondering if the whole area has a name. I started near the SC border and made my way up through Carolina Beach. I gotta figure out where I was because I need a name for the book. Anyway, after my first stop, I made it quickly to the old pontoon bridge that used to cross the intracoastal waterway to Sunset Beach. I planned to stay just for a bit, take a few pictures, then get on the road, hit the other spots I needed to, meet up with someone I planned to meet, and get in to Southport early so I could shoot a little, eat a good dinner and go to bed early.

No such luck.

Actually, my luck got a whole lot better. The pontoon bridge had a volunteer there that happily spent the better part of an hour telling me old stories about the bridge and all the people who got to cross it, or wait to cross it. I missed out on a lot of other places, but I got so much out of that stop. Sometime, you just have to roll with it, and something good comes out of your time.

The pontoon bridge was a very simple design, meant to do the menial job of letting cars cross the water to the newly developed Sunset Beach, while at the same time, letting boats go through the waterway it spanned. The bridge itself was a low simple design, separated by a floating barge of sorts, on pontoons, so that it rose and fell with the tide, that swung out as if on a hinge to open a breech in the bridge for boats to go through. On the hour, two ramps lifted up, and then a big diesel engine would work a winch to pull the floating part open for boats to get through. Because the bridge was so low, pretty much every boat had to wait for the bridge to open to get through. It opened on the hour and closed when the line of boats got through. If a boat came by late, it either tried to run the closing gap, often catching the closing wire on the winch that shut the bridge, or had to wait until the next hour. Because of this, many people traveling the waterway had to plan their visits according to the time of the bridge's opening. It's 15 minutes til? We gotta go!

Of course, when the bridge was open, the road was closed. Traffic would stack up, cars would turn off their engines, and people got out to watch. No use sitting in the hot cars. You weren't going anywhere. You just hoped the bridge got closed before your cold food got warm, or melted.There was no shopping on the island, so people had to take everything in.

Now, this seems like one of those idyllic old timey stories from back long ago when people piled into the big station wagon and traveled to the beach, their only toys a towel and maybe a bucket and shovel. Which would be true. Except that the bridge was used up until January of 2011. And it wasn't like the bridge was even 1950s technology when it was built. This thing was pretty much thrown together to make things work, to get people over to the island.

So there are lots of stories about waiting for the bridge. Lots of stories of being stuck while the bridge was open, or closed. Or broken. And I got to hear them. I can't wait to put them all down in my book.

The bridge was picked up and moved to preserve it, along with the bridge tender house. It;s now a bridge over land. And a lot of history.