It was a beautiful Sunday morning, so I decided to take a trip to see for myself if what I had been hearing about the latest construction on the Delaware River was true. I remembered that over the years, the Delaware has been so carefully guarded by an assorted group of government bodies (UDC, NPS), by volunteers (Delaware Riverkeepers) and primarily by local residents and those who have lived here for years. Now, however, this careful guardianship seems to have given way to a misguided effort to build a bridge across its width at Pond Eddy. It is quite literally a bridge to absolutely nowhere. How I wish I would have spoken up before, how I wish that I and others would have soundly refuted this wasted effort .

As I drove my car over this bridge, which is listed on the National Historic Places register, I thought of all the individuals and homes on the other side and how this bridge’s predecessor served them and others for the years during which the bluestone quarries in the area were at their prime in the late 1800s. This bridge was built in 1904 following a severe flood, but by that time bluestone mining had waned. As I drove, I wondered where each of the roads on the Shohola side would carry me. Since my wife and I take frequent country rides we are always looking for new paths, new trails to follow here in the foothills of the Pocono and Catskill region.

Our answer lay just ahead as we headed over the bridge and turned right onto Flagstone Road. This “road”—and I hesitate to flatter it as such—was the width of one car and heavily potholed. We managed to drive its full half-mile length and noticed a total of four houses. While I can’t guess how many of these homes are lived in year-round, let’s just say it’s half of them, or two. We turned around in someone’s driveway, afraid to overstay our welcome due to the preponderance of no trespassing signs all about. Flagstone Road, bordered by the Delaware River on one side and the railroad on the other, goes absolutely nowhere.

Surely the other road must lead to somewhere, we thought. Surely we can’t have approved the unimaginable expenditure of $18,900,000 plus overruns to just four homes. As we passed by the Pennsylvania entry to the bridge, Flagstone Road becomes Rosa Road. We drove down the six tenths of a mile on Old Rosa and much to our surprise, we counted 12 homes, or shall we say wooden structures. Most of the homes appeared not to have been lived in for some time, and most looked like old hunting cabins. Of these structures, there were four homes that might be termed “year-round” since they were well maintained and landscaped. But once again, this road led to nowhere as well.

So where are we? How were the people of the Town of Lumberland, NY on its mainland and the people of Pennsylvania in neighboring Shohola so hoodwinked? Who justified to whom the spending of $18,900,000 plus overruns to rebuild a bridge that must have a traffic-count of possibly only 10 cars each day? Who is the individual person responsible for giving the go-ahead on this ridiculous two-year project? We’ll never know the answer. I wish that our state governments could have listened to residents and shown more accountability to them. I would have suggested that instead those in charge should give each of the six full-time Pond Eddy Bridge residents a check for $1,000,000, giving them a choice to live very happily anywhere… and we taxpayers could have saved ourselves a sum of about $12,000,000. A win for everyone.

[“Catskill Bob” Daley is a resident of Beach Lake, PA.]