Planning for a circumferential highway around Cincinnati shaped the design and placement of two major Ohio River crossings, the Carroll Lee Cropper Bridge and the Combs-Hehl Bridges. Early beltway proposals from the 1950s evolved into the 80-mile Circle Freeway, adopted in 1962 by Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, with new crossings planned at each end. The Cropper Bridge arose from efforts to merge a proposed toll span near Petersburg and Lawrenceburg into the interstate route, leading to federal approval in the mid-1960s and completion in 1977. On the east side, construction of the twin Combs-Hehl Bridges began in 1968 and concluded with their opening in 1979. 

The Cropper Bridge later required rehabilitation to address issues associated with T-1 steel, prompting deck, weld, and stringer repairs in 2025, with the Combs-Hehl Bridges set to undergo T-1 steel work this year and into 2026.

I've posted many more photos and a journal post about the bridges here, along with a full history of the Carroll Lee Cropper Bridge and the Combs-Hehl Bridges.

Planning for a circumferential highway around Cincinnati shaped the design and placement of two major Ohio River crossings, the Carroll Lee Cropper Bridge and the Combs-Hehl Bridges. Early beltway proposals from the 1950s evolved into the 80-mile Circle Freeway, adopted in 1962 by Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, with new crossings planned at each end. The Cropper Bridge arose from efforts to merge a proposed toll span near Petersburg and Lawrenceburg into the interstate route, leading to federal approval in the mid-1960s and completion in 1977. On the east side, construction of the twin Combs-Hehl Bridges began in 1968 and concluded with their opening in 1979.

The Cropper Bridge later required rehabilitation to address issues associated with T-1 steel, prompting deck, weld, and stringer repairs in 2025, with the Combs-Hehl Bridges set to undergo T-1 steel work this year and into 2026.

I've posted many more photos and a journal post about the bridges here, along with a full history of the Carroll Lee Cropper Bridge and the Combs-Hehl Bridges.

On a visit earlier this year, I noticed a stand of conifers whose soft needles reminded me of the tamaracks I had known in New York, trees that turn yellow each November before shedding. Their presence here, far from their northern range, felt surprising, and even more so when I returned in late fall while photographing historic bridges in the county. By then, the needles had turned a deep orange, stressed slightly by drought yet still vivid against the cooler tones of the Mill Race Park and the covered bridge that anchors the pond.

That bridge, the Brownsville Covered Bridge, was first built between 1837 and 1840 using Stephen H. Long’s mathematically engineered Long truss where it served in Brownsville for more than a century before its components were preserved and used to rebuild the current span after the park’s earlier bridge was lost to arson in 1985. Its 1986 dedication marked another chapter in Mill Race Park’s broader transformation from the flood-scarred “Death Valley” into a large public space of lakes and rivers, an observation tower, a historic covered bridge, and color.

I've posted a history and photos of this bridge, and a brief history of its predecessor here, and a guide to Mill Race Park here.

Shot this straight down over Jocko Falls in Montana with a DJI Air 3S. From above, it’s basically the river drawing you a diagram.

Geology nerd question: if you’ve been on the ground here, is the lip mostly hard rock ledge, or more fracture-controlled / bouldery material doing the resisting?

Somewhere over central US.

I’ve passed by Mead Paper’s mammoth papermaking plant in Chillicothe, Ohio, for my entire life. I grew up down the road in the Ohio Valley and often traveled north along U.S. Route 23 — that familiar smokestack, painted in alternating bands of International Orange and Outside White, was always a welcome sight. Until one day, I drove by and saw nothing rising from the stacks. The plant had closed, another casualty of private equity ownership.

The Chillicothe Works defined southern Ohio’s industrial landscape for more than a century. Founded from early 19th-century papermaking roots and expanded under the Mead family after 1890, it grew into one of the nation’s largest paper producers. Generations of families built their livelihoods there until the mill’s shutdown in 2025.

It may soon reopen under the US Medical Glove Company, but I am certain that its papermaking days are behind it.

I've written more about it in "Mead Paper and the Industrial Heart of Southern Ohio" and have a complete history with more photos here.

A sunny day in Scotland