The next meeting of the Town of Lloyd Historical Society will be Monday, October 6th at 7p.m. in the Highland Public Library.

Titled “The Mid-Hudson Bridge,” this talk by Ron Knapp celebrates the laying of the cornerstone of the bridge on October 9, 1925, a full century ago.

There must have been many who wondered why this cornerstone laying took so long since a contract for its design took place in 1923. The short answer is that the riverbed had to be studied even as structural designs by engineers had to be vetted. How to design and build the road approaches to the span on both the eastern and western sites were hotly debated.

As many of us who have been crossing the bridge over the past half century know, we are aware of ongoing efforts to overcome travel difficulties as traffic has increased. It was not until August 25, 1930 that the 3,000-foot suspension bridge was completed and opened to traffic. Major engineering and environmental challenges slowed its completion for half a decade after the positioning of the cornerstone. Both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt officiated at the opening during late summer 1930. As a tribute, the bridge was renamed the Franklin D. Roosevelt Mid-Hudson Bridge in 1994.

What brings us together for this talk is the placement of the October 1825 cornerstone. However, this talk will look more broadly as a story of progress over two centuries to link the Hudson’s opposing banks with ferries, a rail bridge, and finally this vehicular bridge.The talk will be illustrated with rare historic images from sources uncovered by Vivian Yess Wadlin.

Ron Knapp, a cultural/historical geographer, is Emeritus Professor at SUNY New Paltz.

While most of his field research and publications over five decades deal with China, he added efforts to understand aspects of the transportation geography of the Northeast United States since 2010. Two of his books, one in 2014 and another in 2023, in part celebrate the first bridge across the Hudson in 1804 between Lansingburg and Waterford, two important towns at the time north of Albany. Until his recent research on The Mid-Hudson Bridge, his focus has always been timber bridges in both China and the U.S.