ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Belmont County Engineer Fred Bennett has been honored with a statewide historic bridge preservation award in recognition of his work in preserving some of the area’s historic landmarks.

The award was given during the Ohio Bridge Conference Aug. 17-18 in Columbus and sponsored by the Ohio Department of Transportation, the Ohio Historical Society, the County Engineer’s Association and the National Road Association.

“We just rehabilitated two bridges,” he said.

Bennett added that the two 12-foot bridges date from the 1820s and are located on National Road at Lloydsville and Morristown. As part of the original National Road from Maryland to Illinois, these bridges have seen much use throughout the centuries.

“There’s several of these stone arches left along the road, not a whole lot, but they’re all deteriorated,” Bennett said, adding that the Belmont County bridges have remained in service. “They’re both active bridges. Traffic uses them.”

He said work on the projects began last year and was completed this year.

“It was an ODOT contract,” he said, noting the extensive rehabilitation work and the particular needs of stone-arch bridges. “It was a complicated project, because what they had to do was dismantle the bridge. They tore down the bridges, marked all the stones” then reassembled them.

Bennett spoke about the construction of such bridges.

“On a stone-arch bridge, what holds the bridge together is the weight of the bridge itself,” he said, adding that the keystone holds the stones in place, but wear and tear was taking its toll after close to 200 years.

“Through the years some of the old stones were starting to slip out or deteriorate,” he said. “We were at the point where we were going to have to close the bridges down and replace them, and we didn’t want to replace them with a bridge that we built today. We wanted to restore the historic value of it. They actually tore it apart, then laid the stone back on the false-work, then on top of that they poured a concrete arch.”

Bennett said that this project gave the bridges a new lease on life and maintained the historic feel of the area.

“They’ll probably last another hundred years,” he said.

The project was completed using federal transportation enhancement funds, Toll Road Credit funds, Credit Bridge Program funds and local funding.

“They final cost was $1.1 million and design was $208,000,” Bennett said, noting this was the cost for both bridges together. “That was done to save the bridges and to preserve some history.”

Bennett said another stone bridge dating from the 1820s is still in use at Blaine and was rehabilitated in 2002 . It served as the bicentennial bridge for Ohio’s 200th birthday in 2003. He added that the Blaine bridge is no longer open to traffic, but remains part of the Pease Township Park District.

“That was named by the legislature as the bicentennial bridge for the state,” Bennett said. “So we have three bridges left and they’ve all been rehabbed.”