Dan's Papers - August 31, 2007 - Motorists Try to Drive Across the Shakiest Bridge on the East End

When the Interstate 35 Bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River in Minnesota last month, killing eleven people, the authorities here on Long Island, as everywhere else, began to look very hard at the physical condition of all the bridges in our area. There are 6,000 bridges on the Island. And the one with the worst rating in the Hamptons and the third worst rating on all of Long Island is the Cranberry Hole Bridge that crosses the Long Island Railroad tracks in Amagansett. The state rates it "structurally deficient." The Feds have issued it a "yellow flag." And its numerical rating on a scale from 1 to 9, with 9 considered normal, is an abysmal 4.09. Meanwhile, State bridge workers have said they are not scheduled to make improvements on the bridge until 2011.

Last Wednesday, this writer attempted a crossing of this bridge. With myself as driver and Colin Backwater from Manchester, England as navigator, I pointed my Buick Regal east out of Amagansett, drove down the Montauk Highway, turned left onto Cranberry Hole Road and in just a few hundred yards, arrived on the shoulder of the road at the southern end of this bridge. It was 2 p.m. I parked.

The shoulder on the north side, as it is on the south side, is dirt and well worn from the many K turns made by others who, from time to time, have hoped to cross the Cranberry Hole Bridge, have gotten to the beginning of its ramp and then changed their minds. We would wait at the north ramp shoulder for at least fifteen minutes, watching the skies and getting our courage up, while examining maps and charts and going carefully over our vehicle one last time. Why we looked at the skies was due to the hope that the clouds would part, as they were supposed to do, according to our onboard accuweather.com computer forecaster. With the sun beating down, the wooden planking of the roadbed would expand from the heat and tighten up the joints thereby slowing down the jiggling, and we would have our best chance of making a successful crossing. Otherwise, we had agreed ahead of time, we would postpone the effort to another day.

As Colin adjusted the tire pressure and made his final check of the engine, I approached the bridge with a camera, being careful not to step onto it, and took photographs of it.

The bridge is made of wood, was built in 1893 for horses and wagons, and has a coating of asphalt on the planking, which has worn away in some spots to reveal an often-splintered wood surface. There is heavy wooden reinforcement on its underside, put in during its last renovation, in 1991, which has begun to rot away. There is also a wooden rail fence on both sides of the narrow road of the bridge, which hopefully would at least give the appearance of keeping you from slipping off the sides, although everyone knows it would just give way if it were hit, which is attested to by the many rusty car wrecks on the rail bed amongst the cranberries below and by the parts of the white paint that appear fresh, as compared to other older parts, where the fence has not been damaged and the white paint is peeling.

How I had come to gain the services of Colin Backwater was through the Internet. I had described my failed attempt last April to cross the bridge, and my determination to try again. He had written back and described numerous old bridges in England he had crossed. Then he wrote, "The Cranberry Hole Bridge is certainly considered the pinnacle for bridge crossers such as myself. I would consider it an honor to be one of those who was able to cross it."

It was Colin who suggested that we wait for a sunny day in the height of summer to get the most heat on the road. It was Colin who, a week after he arrived here from England, had gone onto the bridge himself on foot - a dangerous thing in and of itself - with surveying equipment so he could make a computer model of the bridge from which we could plot our route. And it was he who had made the astonishing suggestion, after looking at the videotape of my April try and the bad skid I took on the slippery road, that I make my next attempt with the tire pressure on my Buick lowered to 16 pounds, from the regulation 38, to give the Michelins their best grip.

Colin finished with his engine adjustments, slammed down the hood of the Buick with a loud thump and gave it a thumbs up. Then he climbed into the passenger seat, strapped on his seat belt and helmet and we waited. At 3:18 p.m., by our watches, the clouds parted, but then closed up again. And then, at 3:52, they parted again and this time, they stayed parted. By 4:02, the sun was warming the hood of the Buick.

"Start the engine," Colin said, smiling.

The Cranberry Hole Bridge is just 92 feet from one end to the other, but it is 92 feet of terrifying obstacles that few have conquered. There is the heavy bouncing, the shivering from side to side, the narrowness of the passage. There are only three trains a day that pass under this bridge, and so one would think that would not be an issue, but when a non-scheduled train did pass under it on November 22, 2004, with its horn sounding a low mournful moan, it caused the attempt that day by two Argentineans in a Range Rover to completely panic and lose their nerve. Almost three quarters of the way across, they actually got out of their car and with the superhuman strength of a team-wide adrenaline rush, picked up the Range Rover by its bumpers and turned it completely the other way so it could just quickly go forward and off, which it did. It was a failed effort, but no lives were lost.

And so we moved forward, in low gear and all-wheel-drive, alternating looking down at the ferocious drop on either side up ahead and looking across at one another for any sign of panic.

With a bump, we were onto the wooden planking of the bridge itself. We crept ahead. And we stayed as still as statues in the front seat of the Buick, afraid to move, afraid to do anything, for fear we might throw things off as the tread of the Buick gripped the planking.

At eighteen feet, a group of seagulls circled down and came to rest on the roadbed of the bridge about fifteen feet in front of us.

"Will this upset our weight variances?" I whispered to Colin.

"Depends on if they move or stay where they are," he whispered back.

We continued to sit perfectly still. We would wait it out. But apparently, the seagulls were intending to wait it out, too. They also sat there, perfectly still. It was a standoff.

"How long do we have?" I asked.

Colin took out his Blackberry and began making calculations.

"Gas will hold up for three hours and twelve minutes," he said. "Water circulation around the engine could be a problem. Maybe an hour and a half. Nightfall will come in two hours and ten."

At 4:45, a dog barked somewhere off in the distance, a little teacup poodle from the sound of it, and the seagulls all flew off and we heaved a big sigh of relief. So now, we were moving again.

At the 38-foot mark, we were able to look down and see the remains of the Miata that Isadora Duncan died in when her silk scarf got caught in the rear wheel while attempting a crossing in 1928.

Then, at the 46-foot mark, the wind came up. It often does as we get toward five in the afternoon in the summertime. Frankly, we had expected to have already made it across by this time. But we had not. And now, the bridge was beginning to sway.

"I think we have to turn around," Colin said.

"No, no," I said. "We have only ten feet to go."

"We should wait for another day," Colin continued. I could see fear in his eyes. The swaying was getting worse.

But then, suddenly, the wind stopped. And as the swaying stopped, and without any sign from Colin, I lowered my foot on the gas just a little, and the entire car came ashore on the other side. We let out a scream of victory. We had made it! We had survived the bridge! We were only the third team to have successfully crossed the Cranberry Hole Bridge in its long and colorful history, spanning back one hundred fifteen years. We hugged one another and we high-fived, whooped and hollered.

We were so excited about our victory, in fact, it didn't occur to either of us at this point that we had made a major miscalculation. We had not taken any food, fresh water, or clothing with us for this crossing and now we were over on the other side, our gas running low and there was no organized plan about what to do next.

"Let's get out of here," Colin shouted.

And so, now on the south side of the bridge, we headed further down Cranberry Hole Road and after taking the long way around and crossing the railroad tracks about four miles to the east, we arrived back on the Montauk Highway and drove the few hundred yards to Cyril's Bar, where we hoisted a few, explained what we had just accomplished to the general disbelief of all the bikini kids, bikers and tourists - and then drove home to my house on Three Mile Harbor Road.

There, Colin got on his cell phone and began calling around to various television and magazine news shows and I went into the den and fell asleep.