A Tale Of Three Bridges

Few symbols are more identifiable with Charleston than the iconic Ravenel Bridge spanning the Cooper River and connecting downtown Charleston to Mount Pleasant. The third longest cable-stayed bridge in the western hemisphere (after Louisiana's Audubon Bridge over the Mississippi and New York's Verrazano Narrows Bridge at the mouth of New York's harbor), the Ravenel opened to great acclaim in 2005, one year ahead of schedule and under budget. It carries more than 96,000 vehicles a day along the 1400-foot span between its distinctive diamond-shaped towers, and is expected to carry 100,000 cars per day by 2030.

The "roller coaster" Grace bridge

It's only the third bridge over the Cooper River which, until 1929, could only be crossed by commercial ferry or private boating. In that year, the John P. Grace Memorial Bridge opened to traffic, named for the Charleston mayor who spearheaded the building campaign. The largest bridge of its kind in the world at the time, the Grace was a cantilevered truss bridge with a narrow two-lane roadbed so steep that it became known as the "roller coaster bridge." Privately owned and maintained, drivers had to pay an equally steep toll for the time of $1.00. The toll remained in effect until 1943, when the city of Charleston purchased the structure and, three years later, lifted the toll.

The Pearman (left) and Grace bridges

The bridge's 10-foot-wide lanes were fine for the Model A Fords of the day, but by the 1950's they'd become dangerous for wider and bulkier vehicles in greater and greater numbers. Fender-benders and worse became so common (it became known to Charlestonians as "the scariest bridge in the world") that the city decided a second bridge was called for. This was the Silas Pearman bridge, another truss bridge built parallel to its older cousin, but with modern 12-foot wide lanes. Opened in 1966, the Pearman carried northbound traffic toward Mt. Pleasant, while the older Grace took vehicles south into downtown Charleston.

But the two sister bridges only lasted until the late 1970's, when they were rendered obsolete due to structural deterioration and the coming of larger, taller container ships too big to pass under them to reach the new Wando River container port, a serious liability for Charleston's and the state's economy. A twenty-year-old effort to raise the $700-million for a new eight-lane bridge was led by Charleston-born

Congressman Arthur J. Ravenel, who relinquished his congressional seat to become a state senator and spearhead the campaign and to help create the South Carolina Infrastructure Bank as the financing conduit for the project. So relentless was his enthusiasm for the new bridge that his fellow state legislators voted to name it in his honor during week-long celebrations preceding its opening to traffic in July of 2005. Unlike its relatively short-lived predecessors, the Ravenel Bridge was designed to last at least a century, an enduring symbol of Charleston's vitality and energy.

Open Season

Our island's main tourist season may be a few weeks off, but another and equally crucial season's about to begin, South Carolina's shrimping season. The Lowcountry is fortunate to have access to its favorite food for eight months of the year, from May to December, although the state DNR divides the season into three distinct phases, determined by the quality and quantity of the crustaceans each year.

Limited harvesting usually begins in the spring - this year, starting this week - and is restricted to specific offshore sites that lie along the border between state and federal waters, and then only if winter monitoring has indicated sufficient numbers of mature shrimp. The full summer season usually begins no earlier than mid-May, the date again determined by the DNR based on the health of shrimp populations (it's not yet been announced for this year), and mostly harvests smaller brown shrimp, which were spawned in the previous fall and matured during the winter. The third season begins in September and focuses on larger and more favored white shrimp, but can also bring in more rare pink shrimp until the season ends in December. This is all in addition to net casting for shrimp in tidal creeks by locals, again progressing from brown to white shrimp as the months progress.

White shrimp spawn in the spring and are ready for the table by autumn

Predictions for this season are for an abundant harvest based on a relatively mild winter, as colder winters and resulting lower water temperatures can affect spawning, drive shrimp far offshore and kill off significant numbers of the animals. Shrimping is an important economic driver for the Lowcountry, generating up to ten million dollars in revenue in some years from commercial harvests of some three or four million pounds in good years. A constant worry for commercial shrimpers is the cost of diesel fuel, which rose high enough last year to idle some of the fleet, which may return to the water this season as fuel prices trend lower. It's a hard, physically demanding way to make a living and a tradition that will be honored this weekend with Mount Pleasant's annual Blessing Of The Fleet on Sunday, April 30th at Waterfront Park. Find out more about the event here.

Nature / Nurture

Tomorrow, April 22nd, is the 53rd nationwide Earth Day to raise awareness of the delicate balance between human endeavor and Earth's ecosystem. Earth Day's first appearance in 1970 is often cited as

the birth of the modern environmental movement, but it really began eight years earlier.

The book that started it all

1962 saw the publication of Rachel Carson's "The Silent Spring", a warning about the effects twentieth-century industrialism and urban expansion was wreaking on environmental quality. Within weeks of its appearance, the book sold half-a-million copies in twenty-seven countries. Among the book's readers was Wisconsin's Senator Gaylord Nelson, a longtime promoter of environmental causes who was spurred to further action with a devastating blowout at an oil pumping rig off the California coast. More than 80,000 barrels of crude oil fouled the Santa Barbara channel and it beaches for months, killing shore birds, turtles and other aquatic life.

The New York Times noted the first Earth Day on its frontpage

Nelson had also taken note of the energy and commitment among young demonstrators against the Vietnam War and decided to harness that same energy to promote environmental causes, convincing a fellow conservation-minded colleague, Congressman Pete McCloskey, to serve as co-chair of an organizing committee. Beginning as a series of rallies and seminars on college campuses, Nelson, McCloskey and the staff they built around the effort chose April 22nd as the first Earth Day in 1970, as it was a weekday and fell between spring break and final exams. The concept soon spread well beyond college campuses, acting as a coordinating focus for hundreds of smaller groups with similar aims.

It was an effort whose time had come, for that year later saw the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as the passage of a raft of environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. By 1990, Earth Day had gone global, with more than a billion people worldwide participating in activities ranging from tree planting to shoreline cleanups and anti-pollution efforts around lakes and streams.

There are a host of Earth Day observances this weekend in the Charleston area. Click here for a complete list of events around Johns Island and beyond.