June 13, 2005. Field Trip to Hamilton/ Trenton Marsh. Photos by Nicole Llull.

On October 24, 2004 Marc Stempel invited Club members to a field trip to Plainsboro Preserve.  Nicole Llull took the photos:

2003-2004

A group of photographers under the leadership of Marc Stempel participated in a field trip to PA and NJ covered bridges (April 25, 2003). The weather was perfect and everybody enjoyed this trip. 

A little bit of history:
The Frequently Asked Question about covered bridges has to be: why were they covered? There is a short answer. Wooden bridges with exposed superstructures are vulnerable to rot. Covering and roofing them protects them from the weather, and so they last longer. In one sense, that just puts off the question. Why so many wooden bridges? And why especially in Pennsylvania and the U. S. Northeast?
In eighteen hundred, the northeastern United States was a country in need of bridges. It is a fairly narrow coastal plain cut by many short rivers and creeks. In the "tidewater" region, these little streams and the great estuaries such as the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays had been highways and lifelines. But now the population was surging beyond the tidewater region, drawn both by the growth of agriculture and the call of water-powered industrialization. Inland farmers needed overland transport, and that meant fords or bridges. But the water-powered mills sought out the very places where the streams could not be forded -- the falls and rapids -- and they too needed transportation.
So bridges were needed. The American northeast was a forest country: wood was a plentiful building material, especially in the remote areas where the smaller bridges were needed. And the climate favored wooden construction. The climate of the region is harsh, by European standards -- hot in the summer and icey in the winter, with a freeze-thaw cycle that would overturn stone pavings.

Entrance to the Dingman's waterfalls.