So if I asked you to picture a monument to the
very first highway in American history, you'd
probably picture something, well, something incredibly
grand. Oh, yeah, like towering marble columns
in Washington, D .C., or maybe some giant bronze
plaque gleaming in the sun. Right. Exactly. You
definitely wouldn't picture a bizarre, crooked,
literally S -shaped pile of stones just sitting
quietly in the middle of Ohio. No, you wouldn't.
But honestly, you absolutely should, because
it's funny how the physical reality of history
rarely matches that pristine version we keep
in our heads. Oh, for sure. It's always messier.
Yeah. The real monuments to how this country
was stitched together, they're often just, you
know, covered in dirt. They were built through
sheer trial and error. And in this case, defined
by some truly strange geometry. Which brings
us to today. Welcome to today's Deep Dive. We
are exploring a highly specific and honestly
kind of bizarre piece of American infrastructure
that was built back in 1828. It's officially
called the S Bridge 2 and it's located in Muskingum
County, Ohio. And this bridge is so peculiar,
it actually earned the spot on page 203 of a
book called Oddball, Ohio, a guide to some really
strange places. Which, by the way, is just an
incredible title for a history book. I know,
right? It sets the perfect tone for this. It
really does. So our mission today for this deep
dive is to explore how this one seemingly obscure
oddball structure serves as the the physical
anchor for the birth of American federal highways.
Yeah. It's the starting line, basically. Exactly.
We're going to unpack the incredible historical
footprint of the county it sits in and look at
how we preserve these weird little marvels today.
And whether you are a hardcore history buff or
just someone who uses paved roads every single
day and takes them completely for granted. Which
is most of us, honestly. Right. Which is most
of us. You are going to want to hear how this
massive physical network actually started. I'm
telling you, it completely changes the way you
look at your morning commute. Oh, I bet. You
really start seeing the ghosts of 19th century
engineering in like every curve of the road.
OK, well, let's unpack this because before we
even look at the oddball bridge itself, we have
to understand. the literal mud it was built on.
Right, the foundation. Yeah, we have to start
at the macro level. So Esbridge 2 is part of
the National Road, which was the very first federally
financed highway in the United States, built
in 1828. 1828, yeah. And I was trying to wrap
my modern brain around this. And the best analogy
I could come up with is, OK, imagine crowdfunding
the very first nationwide Wi -Fi network. OK.
but for horse -drawn wagons. Like, that is what
a federally financed highway actually meant back
then. You know, that analogy actually works perfectly
because of the word network. Really? Yeah, because
before 1828, the United States did not have a
physical network. I mean, if you were traveling,
you were essentially dealing with disconnected,
highly unreliable local routers to use your Wi
-Fi comparison. Oh, okay. Like, dead zones everywhere.
Exactly. You had dirt paths that just turned
into impassable swamps the second it rained.
You had roads maintained by local counties, but
only up to their own borders. And then private
turnpikes where some farmer might charge you
a toll just to cross his field. Wow. But okay,
I have to push back a little on the scale of
this. or at least admit some confusion here.
Because when I hear federally financed today,
I just picture a routine bureaucratic infrastructure
bill. The government hires some contractors,
they lay down some asphalt, everyone complains
about the traffic cones for a few months. Ruttles,
yeah. Yeah. Was it really that simple in 1828?
I mean, the United States was barely 50 years
old. Oh, it wasn't simple at all. Not even close.
What's fascinating here is that the very concept
of the federal government financing a highway
was incredibly controversial. Really? Oh, yeah.
completely unprecedented. It wasn't just about
making a commute slightly more convenient. By
stepping in to finance a highway, the federal
government was making this massive existential
statement. They were basically saying, we cannot
survive as a unified nation if we are physically
isolated from one another. Ah, because of the
geography. Exactly, because of the Appalachian
Mountains. Right. They were a massive terrifying
physical barrier. I mean, if you wanted to move
goods or people or even just information like
mail from the East Coast into the interior, into
Ohio and beyond. It was probably agonizingly
slow. Oh, painfully slow. It could take weeks
to move a wagon a few hundred miles. You've got
axles breaking, supplies rotting. So the federal
government stepping in to build a national road,
it was essentially a matter of national security
then. Yes. Exactly that. It was about stitching
the East Coast to the Western frontier before
the country just, I don't know, fractured into
isolated pieces. Precisely. The federal financing
is the signal that physical connectivity had
become the nation's ultimate economic destiny.
The U .S. decided it needed a physical spine
to hold it together. I love that visual. Physical
spine. But of course, that spine is made of road
and roads eventually hit water. They do. Which
brings us to the actual structure itself. We
know why this massive federal road was built.
Now let's look at the quirky reality of what
actually got built on it. This is my favorite
part. Because the transition from the grand sweeping
idea of a unified nation down to the muddy physical
reality of this specific bridge in Ohio is just
wild. It really is. So the blueprints for this
bridge were drawn up by a man named Benjamin
Latrobe. OK. He's a highly significant architect
of the era. But the thing is, He didn't build
a standard straight crossing here. He built a
bridge shaped literally like the letter S. And
here's where it gets really interesting, like
Y and S shape. Yeah. The architectural records
note the coordinates, they note the year 1828,
and they list Latrobe as the mastermind. Right.
It even gets categorized in modern times as a
strange place, like in that oddball or hyo book.
Right. But the records don't explicitly spell
out the physics. We have to use some logical
deduction here. based on the physical landscape
to figure out why a brilliant architect would
intentionally build a crooked bridge. Well, if
you think about the materials they were working
with in the 1820s, it starts to make perfect
sense. OK, walk me through it. So. They are building
with heavy stone masonry, right? They're building
arches. Right. No steel beams back then. Exactly.
No steel. So if you are trying to cross a rushing
river with 1820 stone arches, you need that bridge
to be as short and strong as humanly possible.
Which means you have to cross the water perfectly
perpendicular. Yes. Like a straight line across
the absolute shortest possible gap. Right. You
want a straight 90 degree angle across the current.
What happens if the dirt roads leading up to
the river don't meet the water at a perfect right
angle? What if the road is winding along the
riverbank, like parallel to the water? Oh, wow.
OK, I see it now. You can't just build a diagonal
stone bridge across a wide river. The water current
would just destroy the angled arches, right?
And the span would be way too long to support
its own weight. That is exactly the problem.
The physics just don't work for a diagonal stone
arch. So Latrobe's solution is just pure pragmatic
engine. Oh, right. You curve the road out over
the water first, right, to get that perfect perpendicular
street crossing over the main current. Oh, I
get it. And then once you hit the other side,
you have to curve the road back to reconnect
with the path along the opposite bank. That's
amazing. Right. So you curve out, you cross straight,
you curve back, hence an S shape. That is brilliant.
It's just an incredibly clever solution to a
brutal geographic problem. Totally. But over
time... As engineering evolved and we figured
out how to build massive steel suspension bridges,
they can cross at literally any angle. The modern
stuff, yeah. Yeah. That original pragmatic reason
for the S shape just kind of faded away. And
what we're left with today is a structure that
just looks totally bizarre to the modern eye.
Exactly. It ceases to be just a functional bridge
and it becomes a destination. It becomes an oddball
cultural artifact. Right. Latrobe created something
so visually distinct that it's remembered centuries
later, not for its structural necessity, but
just for its strangeness. A certified landmark
in oddball Ohio. Which actually makes me wonder
about the environment it was built in. Because
S Bridge 2 doesn't exist in a vacuum. No, not
at all. When you look at the other structures
built in this exact same area, this wild pattern
emerges. But what it actually took to build that
physical spine we talked about. Muskingham County
wasn't just home to one weird bridge. Oh, not
even close. If we connect this to the bigger
picture. the sheer concentration of very transportation
infrastructure in this one county is it's standering.
OK, let me just list some of the structures historically
registered in this immediate area to give you
the listener a sense of the chaos here. These
do. OK, along with S Bridge to Muskingum County
has the Y Bridge. It has the Dresden Suspension
Bridge, the Salt Creek Covered Bridge. It has
the Muskingum River, Loch Noma 10 and Canal.
Yeah, it has the Muskingum River Navigation Historic
District Freight Houses. rail depots, you name
it. When you look at that list, you are basically
looking at a fossil record of intense architectural
problem solving. I was going to say, it sounds
like a modern day crash test facility for infrastructure.
It really does. Like you have engineers throwing
every conceivable design at the landscape. S
bridges, Y bridges, cover bridges, canals. It's
like the Silicon Valley of 19th century civil
engineering. I love that. And that sheer variety,
it tells us that Muskingum County was an absolute
nightmare to get across. Geography was just actively
fighting the National Road. Oh, fighting it every
step of the way. You have multiple rivers converging,
uneven terrain, and this massive flow of westward
traffic trying to punch its way through this
one bottleneck. Let's talk about the Y Bridge
for a second, because that one breaks my brain
even more than the S Bridge. Oh, yeah. The Y
Bridge is wild. A Y Bridge isn't just a crossing.
It's literally an intersection over water. Right.
over water, with horse -drawn wagons, no less.
You are merging or splitting traffic while suspended
above a rushing river. Imagine the engineering
audacity required to even attempt that in the
1800s. It paints such a vivid picture of the
daily reality there. Like, the terrain was so
stubborn and the traffic was so heavy, they couldn't
even wait to get to solid ground to build an
intersection. They had to put a traffic merge
in the middle of the river. And if we connect
this to the bigger picture of the local economy,
a bottleneck like that changes everything. How
so? Well, when a crossing is that difficult,
traffic slows down, wagons back up. People get
stuck waiting for their turn to navigate the
S bridge or, you know, merge onto the Y bridge.
Oh, right. And when people get stuck, they need
places to sleep. Exactly. They need places to
sleep. They need places to eat. They need places
to drink. The infrastructure forces the economy
into existence. Precisely. which perfectly explains
the rest of the historical footprint in Muskingum
County. Alongside all these well bridges, you
have all these historical sites. You've got places
like the Headley Inn, the Smith House and Farm,
the Five Mile House, the Taverner Sears Tavern.
There's even the Schauer -Linzer House and Brewery
Complex. You can practically smell the wood smoke
in the beer. You really can. This wasn't just
some quiet road through the woods. It was this...
teeming chaotic hub of weary travelers resting
their horses before attempting these. bizarre
river crossings. Yeah. And you also see a massive
cluster of churches springing up alongside it
all. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Mount Zion Presbyterian,
St. James Episcopal, St. John's Lutheran, St.
Thomas Aquinas. A whole community took root in
the mud of this bottleneck. Wow. The difficulty
of the terrain inadvertently created a thriving
pioneer metropolis. OK, so we've established
how deeply vital this entire county was in the
1800s. It was the bleeding edge of American connectivity,
the crash test facility for the nation's first
highway. But I want to jump forward to the modern
era to explore how we actually treat these structures
today. Looking at the preservation timeline of
Espers 2, it is honestly kind of jarring. It
reveals a lot about our blind spots as a society.
Yeah. OK, so it was built in 1828, designed by
Benjamin Latrobe as part of the first federally
financed highway. Right. Yet it wasn't officially
added to the National Register of Historic Places
until April 23, 1973. 1973. Yeah. It was given
reference number 7300001513. So, what does this
all actually mean for us today? It took almost
150 years for this monumental piece of national
infrastructure to get official federal historic
protection. This raises an important question,
I think, about how long it takes a society to
actually recognize its own history. Yeah. We
have this tendency to assume that because a structure
is treated with reverence now, you know, it was
always protected. Like it was always in a museum
or something. Exactly. But for 145 years, Esper
Jadisic was presumably just out there in the
elements. Just a weird crooked road that Local
commuters probably found annoying. Think about
a local road you drive every day that has a bizarre
frustrating curve in it. Ugh, I can think of
a few. Right. Now imagine finding out a century
from now that the nation's founding engineers
designed that exact curve to solve some massive
mathematical crisis. It's crazy to think about.
That is essentially what was happening in Ohio.
For over a century people were driving their
wagons and eventually their early Model T Fords
right over this masterpiece of 1820s problem
-solving completely oblivious to what it represented.
It is incredibly lucky it survived at all. Oh,
yeah. That 145 -year gap highlights a terrifying
vulnerability in our historical memory. I mean,
how many other S bridges or Y bridges or local
oddballs just didn't make it to 1973? We'll probably
never know. Right. How many were paved over,
blown up or torn down for scrapstone before the
National Register of Historic Places even existed
to protect them? Esprich II is a survivor. They
had to wait a century and a half for someone
with a clipboard to finally show up, look at
this all ball pile of stones and say, wait a
minute, this is the anchor of the American highway
system, which actually leads us perfectly into
the final and maybe most fascinating aspect of
this whole story. It's about how this 19th century
physical network interacts with the 21st century
digital network. Ah, the transition from stone
to data. Yes, because despite its official preservation
in 1973, its digital footprint today on Wikipedia
is categorized as a stub. A stub? Yes. Underneath
all the grand history, there is a literal digital
tag on the page that reads, this article about
a property in Muskingum County, Ohio on the National
Register of Historic Places is a stub. You can
help Wikipedia by adding missing information.
Wow. It even files it into these hidden categories
like Appalachian Ohio registered historic place
stubs and Ohio bridge structure stubs. The irony
there is just it's thick. It really is. You have
a physical structure that represents the very
first monumental effort by the federal government
to connect the country, right? A total triumph
of 19th century networking. Exactly, a networking
pioneer. Yet on the ultimate network of the modern
age, the internet, its record is incomplete.
It's just a stub waiting for someone to care
enough to fill in the blanks. The federal government
in 1828 had the sheer audacity to fund a highway
through the mountains. Yeah. And the modern internet
has the audacity to try and categorize literally
all of human knowledge. S -Bridge 2 somehow sits
on the fringes of both. That's such a great way
to put it. There was an oddball physical structure
that confused travelers in Ohio, and now it's
an oddball digital stub confusing algorithms
on the internet. It is a profound reminder, honestly,
that the project of building a network is never
actually finished. Whether that network is made
of heavy masonry spanning an Ohio River or lines
of code organizing human history online, There
are always gaps. Yeah, the categorization templates
might slice and dice the bridge by its state,
its completion year, and its reference number.
But the narrative, the grueling reality of Benjamin
Latrobe figuring out that S shape. The smells
of the taverns, the daily life of the travelers.
Yes. All that information is still basically
missing from the digital record. You can help.
by adding missing information. Exactly. It is
literally a call to action. Yeah, it's asking
the reader to step up and cry source the preservation
of the bridge's digital memory, the exact same
way local historians had to step up and advocate
for its physical preservation back in 1973. Because
we spend so much time hyper categorizing our
world, you know, assigning coordinates and reference
numbers that we sometimes just forget to write
down the actual story. You really do. Which is
exactly what we set out to do today. We started
at the macro level, looking at the agonizingly
slow travel of the early 1800s and the political
miracle of the federally financed National Road.
We zoomed in on the pragmatic, mysterious S -shaped
design engineered by Benjamin Latrobe. We explored
the chaotic crash test facility of Muskingum
County where Y bridges merged traffic over Russian
water and a booming pioneer economy sprang up
to service the weary travelers. And finally we
looked at its incredibly delayed preservation
in 1973 and its current existence as a digital
stub waiting for someone to finish telling its
story. It is a massive narrative hiding inside
a very small, very strange piece of infrastructure.
It really is. And for you, the listener, I want
you to remember this. Every time you merge onto
a smooth, massive, modern interstate, every time
you cruise at 65 miles an hour without even thinking
about the terrain beneath your tires. You are
participating in a legacy. Yes. And that legacy
didn't start with perfect, clean lines of asphalt.
It started with muddy, experimental, strange
little bridges in places like Muskingum County.
It started with the oddballs. And, you know,
if a monument designed by the architect of America's
first federal highway can still be reduced to
a digital stub with missing information, it begs
a really compelling question. What's it? What
local historical marvels are sitting in your
own hometown right now? I mean, what oddball
structures, weird intersections or strange old
buildings are you driving past every single day,
quietly waiting for someone to notice them, figure
out why they were built and finally fill in their
missing history?