Work is underway on nearly $1 million worth of repairs to the historic stone bridge that witnessed the first shots of the first battle of the Civil War. Located within Manassas National Battlefield in Virginia, the bridge will have its stone masonry repaired and the road surface repaved under an $817,000 contract.
While the work is not expected to be completed before January, the bridge will remain open during most of the work, according to park staff.
Missing and damaged stones on the exterior of the bridge will be replaced and repaired using techniques employed when the bridge was completed in the 1880s. Additional work includes repairing damage to the center pier caused by years of erosion and replacing the deteriorating cement coating on the underside of the bridge. While some contemporary methods and materials will be used to ensure long-term durability, this work will not change the bridge’s historic look and feel.
For one to two weeks in late November and/or early December, the bridge will close while crews replace the surface people walk across. For safety, visitors are reminded to remain cognizant of the construction work and follow any detour or routing directions. The parking area near the bridge will remain open throughout the project.
During the First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run), Union artillerists positioned east of the bridge fired the opening shots of the battle over the stream crossing on the morning of July 21, 1861. Originally built around 1825, Stone Bridge survived the First Battle of Manassas only to have Confederate forces destroy the span in March 1862. Union army engineers constructed a temporary wooden span over the bridge ruins in 1862, and the Union Army of Virginia used this wooden bridge during the Second Battle of Manassas (Bull Run) in late August 1862. The present-day Stone Bridge was completed in the 1880s on the site of the earlier bridge, and remained open to vehicles until the mid-1920s.
This important project was funded, in part, through a Virginia Department of Transportation, Transportation Alternatives Program grant.
Comments
My daughter and I drove through the Vicksburg Battlefield in Mississippi last week. The park waived the entrance fee because it was Memorial Day. My daughter wanted to read the graves. I told her that too many men were dead, so they didn't have individual graves. Instead, it's a collection of mass burials with markers that simply say the state that particular regiment came from, such as Missouri or Mississippi.
As we drove through the battlefield, which is essentially a graveyard, I turned my eyes away from the statues. I know they are satanic for our Father has commanded us not to make graven images. I know the statues are Satan's way of gloating over what he and his Jesuits perceive as a victory. The Jesuit aim is to destroy all Protestants and establish Roman Catholic rulership.
My ancestors faught on both sides of the war, and they were both Protestants. More Americans died in the Civil War than all the other Wars combined. Satan and his Jesuits killed two birds with one stone. The South was decimated, and there were few men left between the ages of 10 and 80 after the war. As a result many of us Southerners are "inbred," myself included.
Camp Hayes was a man that avoided the war by hiding in the woods in Decatur County, Tennessee. The Battle of Shiloh wiped out the men of breeding age there. Camp fathered 87 children after the war. In the next generation he had hundreds of grandchildren in two counties. Nearly every young person was his grandchild. My grandmother's parents were both Camp's grandchildren.
I'm not ashamed. In fact, I am amazed that I survived at all, or that any of us survived. After the Holocaust the Jews were also decimated, so that many were forced to marry their first cousins. Just like the South rebounded, the Jewish population has also rebounded. Satan tries to kill us and he uses his Jesuit armies. Please read the book The Secret Terrorists by Bill Hughes.
The blood of God's children continues to cry out from the ground. Their bones, muscles and flesh have been long eaten by hogs and wild animals, but their blood is still talking. These soldiers will live again, but the Jesuits are walking dead men. All who continue in secret societies, such as the Freemasons and the Knights of Columbus, and practice the mystery of iniquity, will burn over a slow fire alongside the Jesuits.