Far down in the New River Gorge, in the shadow of the towering New River Gorge Bridge, a West Virginia Division of Highways (WVDOH) bridge crew is painstakingly replacing the wooden deck of the historic Tunney Hunsaker Bridge.
Built in 1889, the Tunney Hunsaker Bridge was the first bridge across the New River in the New River Gorge. The span was built to connect the mining towns of Fayette and South Fayette.
When the New River Gorge Bridge opened in 1977, high above the gorge, the modest span at the bottom of the gorge was closed to vehicular traffic. But the increase in tourism brought about by the larger bridge and the recognition of the New River as a national river led to the small span being rebuilt in 1997 and reopened to traffic. The Gorge is now part of the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve.
Time and traffic had worn down the wooden deck of the historic structure, and it was time to replace the deck. WVDOH bridge engineers decided to do the work in-house to save time and money.
“We typically do work for 50 to 75 percent less than contractor prices,” said Nathan Thomas, P.E., Deputy District Engineer for WVDOH District Nine, which includes Fayette County. Cost of putting a new wooden deck on the bridge is approximately $180,000.
District Nine called on DisForce, a special crew of workers in the district who take on special projects. A 10-person bridge crew began the painstaking process of replacing the deck on the 420-foot bridge in late January.
Workers are replacing each board on the wooden deck one at a time. It takes eight boards placed side by side to make up a foot of bridge deck, so the entire 420-foot bridge will require about 3,360 individual boards.
Workers are replacing the deck as they go, pulling up the old boards and replacing them with new lumber.
On the ends of the bridge, where they have to work around the bridge truss and girders, each board must be measured and cut by hand. But once they reach the 278-foot main span of the bridge, they’ll switch to foot-long prefabricated sections of board they nailed together beforehand to speed up the work. Each section contains eight boards and is about 29 feet wide.
Work is expected to be finished by the end of March.
“We’re working long hours to get this done in the short window outside peak tourism season for the park,” Thomas said.
“These men and women are very diligent in the work they do,” Thomas said. “We’re fortunate to have them.”
In 1998, the bridge was renamed in honor of Tunney Hunsaker, longtime Fayetteville police chief and a former professional boxer who was matched up against Muhammad Ali in Ali’s first professional boxing match. Ali was declared the winner by unanimous decision after six rounds.
Ali and Hunsaker remained friends over the years, and Ali came to Fayetteville in 1997 for Hunsaker’s retirement celebration.
