The 206-year-old bridge is a landmark for visitors to the exhausted South River

Karen Wolfe did something this week that few have done in the last 80 years.

She walked along Somerfield’s Main Street and its 206-year-old Great Crossings Bridge, landmarks that are usually about 50 feet underwater on the Youghiogheny River Lake in southwest Somerset County.

“We had to go up and see it,” said Wolfe, who drove to the lake with her family from her home in the New Stanton area. “It’s amazing. We’ve been sailing here for probably 15 years and we’ve never seen anything like this.”

Built in 1818 of hewn sandstone, the bridge once spanned Highway 40 over the Yuge River between Somerset and Fayette counties. Upstream of the modern version of the highway and its much taller bridge, the Grand Crossing span periodically emerges from the depths when dry weather causes low water levels in the man-made lake.

Bright skies and a pleasant temperature in the 70s brought a steady stream of visitors to Somerfield Recreation Area on the shores of Lake Somerset on Thursday afternoon. They walked along the part of the historic bridge that protrudes into the reservoir, some of them preserved their impressions with photos and videos.

Jack Kemp and his wife Gail drove east from their home in Hopwood, on the outskirts of Uniontown, to investigate the bridge.

“Before, you only saw the top,” he said. “Now you can see it all.

“We have never been here before. We have just seen him drive over a (modern) bridge. I have never seen the water so low.’

“The reason is the drought,” said Andrew Byrne, a public affairs officer for the Army Corps of Engineers.

The Army Corps oversees the 6-mile lake and the levee near Confluence that created it in 1943 as part of a federal flood control program.

Rainfall in the region was sparse, with most of Somerset, Fayette and Westmoreland counties under “severe drought” conditions, according to the National Integrated Drought Information System.

According to Shannon Hefferan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Pittsburgh office, rainfall in Connellsville West is about 3 inches below normal year-to-date totals, while Pittsburgh is more than 2 inches below normal for September to the end of October. .

The normal summer water elevation of South Lake is 1,439 feet above sea level. The level was at 1,378 feet on Oct. 18 and had dropped another 4 feet as of Friday.

According to Byrne, the very top of the bridge becomes visible when the lake level reaches 1,392 feet, and the bridge deck is exposed at 1,384 feet.

The construction of Yugh Dam flooded Great Crossings Bridge, the Somerset County town of Somerfield, and other small communities in either of the two affected counties.

Wolfe could make out the foundation blocks of several Somerfield buildings under a layer of dried mud, bordered by the remains of a paved sidewalk littered with rotting stumps.

“I saw an old photo of it,” she said of the town’s main street. “There were buildings along this sidewalk.

“It was a tree-lined street. It’s so cool.”

In addition to the city’s restored ruins, Wolfe pointed to more modern landmarks that have gotten a makeover: the Somerset County Boat Launch and the Fayette County Boat Docks, which remain high and dry.

Compared to other structures in Somerfield, the Great Crossings Bridge impressed visitors with how intact it remained.

“As for the buildings, they basically displayed everything. But they didn’t show the bridge,” said visitor Warren Keene. “They could have showcased the bridge and reused the stone elsewhere, but they didn’t.”

Keene is a history buff with a special interest in Route 40, the first U.S. federal highway built between 1811 and 1834. It is also known as National Pike.

On Monday, he made the three-hour drive from his home east of Frederick, Maryland, to see the Great Crossings Bridge.

When he returned on Thursday, he said: “It’s kind of nice how it’s coming out. The water fell a little more.

“I love stone arched bridges.”

Scottdale resident Ryan Brooks recalled boating with his neighbors on Youg Lake as a child, but his visit this week was the first time he’d seen the Great Crossings outdoor bridge in person.

“I have friends in the area who said I should check it out,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing, but it happens every once in a while.

“They don’t build them like that anymore,” he said. “It’s nice with the old dressed stone.”

“How things can hold like that under water is just crazy,” said Jack Kemp.

Mel Houseman, who lives downstream of the Yugh River in Westmoreland County’s Jacobs Creek community, took a trip on his motorcycle to see the open bridge. He commented on both the positive and negative effects of low water.

There is less chance that the river could flood and damage his house, he said, noting, “Where I am now, the water is very low, maybe knee deep.”

But Hausman also acknowledged the economic hit to local businesses as a result of the lake’s depletion of water and recreational opportunities.

“It must be devastating for these people,” he said. “You (boats) docks just lie on the shore. It requires losses.”

Among those affected by the dry conditions are Tom and Carol Trent, who live between their Greensburg home and their own restaurant, the Great Crossings Inn, overlooking the Somerset County Boat Launch.

For the first time this year, they offered several Airbnb units sought by both tourists and those visiting local relatives. But the drought forced them to stop working earlier than they had planned.

“We closed it on Labor Day weekend, but we weren’t going to close it until this weekend,” Carol Trent said Thursday. “Everybody’s wells were going dry and we were worried we were going to have water problems.”

“Financially, it definitely hurt me not to open a place,” Tom Trent said. “But (we) couldn’t risk drilling a new well.”

The low level of the lake allowed the couple to get an unusual experience of kayaking under one of the stone arches of the Great Bridge. But, as with many other visitors to the lake, it limited some other water activities.

The Trents usually pull their powerboat out of their nearby lake dock in mid-September, but this year they did it a month early.

Compared to this season, the bridge wasn’t open as much during the low water the Trents saw in 2019, when they bought the hotel. But they have seen family photos that indicate the water level in 1998 was lower than it is now.

When the water level gets too low, Tom Trent observed, “You can’t safely sink your trailer deep enough to get the boat out.

“The entire territory “died” a month earlier, which greatly affected all enterprises.”

“It definitely hurt the boating business,” Carol Trent said.

But as boat traffic on the lake has decreased, the flow of tourists who come to see the bridge has increased. The change in lake level didn’t stop anglers, who found new spots to try on the exposed bridge.

“It’s a huge draw,” Tom Trent said. “Everybody comes to see it. There are almost as many people here on weekends as there are in the summer, during the boating season.”

Carol said, “We had to sell T-shirts.”