This happened on a small county road where I live. The road was through road when I was growing up, but after the bridge washed away once and was severely damaged several other times, and the last time, so severely, that the road was closed permanently. The road on both ends looks like a tunnel due to the overhanging limbs and the sides of the road no longer being trimmed by the county road department driving down to the old bridge or it did the last time I was down there. There is ample signage on both sides stating the road is closed. There are two large berms of dirt and debris blocking both ends of the bridge too. The driver hit the berm, went airborne, and landed forward some distance on the bridge. It was only when he encountered the fallen trees near the other end that he stopped and called 911. The van is still there as the county and wrecker services try to determine a way to safely remove the van off Maxwell Bridge. The other side of the bridge looks much like this side with missing boards. This place was known as "Bridge out" when I was kid. They may change it to FedEx Van Road now. Who knows?
Add banjos and you'd have the setting for a good movie....
ReplyDeleteOr paint it orange, put a confederate battle flag on top and start telling stories about those Duke boys.
Delete...to the winsome twang of dueling banjos.
DeleteWe have a mountain cabin in an eclectic development that was platted in 1929. The county assessor has no clue when the 65 or so cabins were built, so he guesses at either 1905 or 1920-no way either could be remotely correct, but his guess is good enough to get the property taxes collected. There still are remnants of an old road going from the county road down by the creek all the way up to the topmost cabin. In quite a few places there are trees with 6-12" trunks growing in the middle of the old road. The lower section serves as an entrance to 4 or 5 cabins and then goes into a steep, forested section where every S curve has been washed out. Gurggle Maps knows better: it shows that section instead as being located about 300 feet away, right above a sheer 70 foot drop off that on the map shows it Tee-ing just off a newer road that gives access to half a dozen other properties.
ReplyDeleteDuring the run up to the '08 election there were democrat canvassers in the area and one was ashen faced then he encountered me-he had just driven the wrong way down the steep road above the drop off and could not understand why his phone showed a road that was not there. Told him "yeah, we've been trying to get the county to correct the map and they say they have been trying to get Google to correct their map". Run around city. The county maps-of course-incorporate the Google maps so the mistake gets duplicated several times over. What a shit show.
Anyone can submit corrections to Google maps, you don't have to be a county official.
DeleteThe guy was on the way to vote for Buyden, give him a break please, it is clear that he is not very smart.
ReplyDeleteThis clown takes STOOPID to a whole 'nother level!
ReplyDeletePull yer head outta yer ass, son - stoopid is no way to go through life.
Good thing this young punk wasn't working on the stuff *I* was handling at his age!
There's a county road behind our ranch that dead ends about 100 yards from another road. GPS says it connects, but the county road existed and ended long before the other road was put in. It's decently marked, if someone is paying attention.
ReplyDeleteDuring the height of the Eagleford shale boom in our area, we had several 18-wheeler water/oil trucks try to take this county road only to have to back their way out after hitting the dead end. The best was when I stopped a guy and told him it was a dead end and he kept on driving. I followed behind just to laugh at him and say "Told you so".
Then again, traffic signals where I live are taken merely as a suggestion, so there's that... Maybe red isn't red in Spanish...
ReplyDeleteWe have a local road in similar condition. Maps show it as a passable route. Trying to travel the road is impossible for anything on four wheels.
ReplyDeleteWe used to party out in that area back in the 70’s as the County Sheriff rarely came out there. You’d of thought he’d paid attention to the Bridge out signs…
ReplyDeleteI went a few times back in the day. It was so far off the beaten path and being a dead-end road that hardly anyone ever went down there except young folks. I never once saw the "law" down there. Once during spring break, I was about 13-14 L. Howse and I camped down below the bridge for full week. We had 13 trot lines and over two hundred drop hooks out and we ran them all during the night and day while there. There were many blue cats to be "skinnt" and it was a trip I'll never forget.
DeleteThere were no "Bridge Out" signs because Pugsley Addams stole them.
DeleteAnd if that was a FedEx van, did they get all the packages out?
Would be cool to catalog all these roads to nowhere and post them on a site like advrider.com. Let the off-road bike guys have fun during their Sunday country road rides.
ReplyDeleteWe have a lot of the same problems mentioned above as one can well see. When the 911 addresses, Tom-toms/Garmins started to appear there were a lot of problems. One such area was close to where I live. There was road that intersected with a powerline. The powerline "cut" intersected with the road about a half mile after turning off the "main road" ("you might be a redneck if that is included in directions to your house.....Jeff Foxworthy). The navigation systems were showing the powerline cut to be a road. This problem was a steady cause for consternation until about 15 years ago.
ReplyDeleteNever ask an old local man for directions. It always something like " Do you remember where the old school was they tore down" No first time here. Well just past there there is a road.
ReplyDeleteEvery once in a while I will post something like, "Stop listening to voices in your head, or your dashboard, whichever." There are 2 places not too far from where I sit that have signs that basically say, "I don't care what your GPS says, this is not a road." One of them is in front of a bridge that washed out about 80 years ago. You can't get people to believe that their tech is wrong. It is the current religion
ReplyDelete