Bridges of Allegheny County

From Pennsylvania's green hills, across her pleasant valleys and fields, when Nature uncorks the mystery so long hidden, down come the runs, rivulets, creeks and streams, down come the tributaries, down the mighty rivers, the Ohio, the Allegheny, the Monongahela, all from sunken springs, the uncharted channels, the overflowing pools from rain-soaked mountaintops: Under these thousands of bridges such waters move, as with the vigorous flush racing the Spring thaw, when pedestrians throng together on these crests of steel, when children and adults join to test the mortared stone, to stand in awe, mouths agape, safely fascinated far above, owing thanks to designer and draftsman, wielders of the rule, the quiet retainers of our once proud pioneer spirits: Return today a hundred or a thousand years, return to the age when Man believed in magic streams, return to a time of rivers which we could never cross, to a lack of structural steel and expansion joints, to a sight of people stranded and starving on the farthest bank, return to the uncluttered dreams of our inventive men, then rejoin this day, securely transcending a once open space. . .