The Bridge on the River Mon

Pennsylvania is building a link in the Mon-Fayette Expressway around my old hometown. The construction is mostly “out in the country.” Some might well question how this investment will be paid for, or whether it is the wisest priority for infrastructure. Leaving aside those concerns, it is an amazing engineering and construction project.
Driving up-river from Bridgeport (see July 4 post), trees eventually close in on both sides of the highway. The old industrial site of Alicia has become a forest. Though signs warn of construction ahead, it takes awhile for a glimpse of the columns to appear through the trees. At the construction site there is a clearing on the left. Immediately you drive back into the forest.
The picture below was taken from across the river, on the Washington County side, looking back towards Fayette County on the other side. Bridgeport and Brownsville are on the far side, 2 miles to the left.

The foreground park is a recent development, having been occupied for decades by a large slate (coal mine refuse) dump. Near the middle of the picture, above the park bench, the trees are on the far side of the river; the dark horizontal swath marks the rail line. Hidden from view is the mouth of Rush Run, which reaches the far side of the Mon River through a large culvert under both the highway and the railroad. On hot humid days deep down beside Rush Run it would be easy to imagine being in a tropical jungle. Rush Run Hollow extends back to the right. Turning attention to the pillar with several layers of scaffolding, and the hillside behind it, Alicia Heights Road climbs steeply up that hill. There is a good view from there looking back down on the construction site. There is a similar view from the construction site's web camera, which is located near the right edge of the photo above. A half mile beyond the hilltop is Telegraph Road, where there will be an interchange. Beyond that interchange is construction on an equally impressive complex of bridge structures that will carry the Expressway about 100 feet above Bull Run Road and about 200 feet above Dunlap Creek.
A little over 100 years ago Rush Run Hollow was briefly the site of another bustling transportation corridor. John K. Gates in The Beehive Coke Years: A Pictorial History of Those Times, includes on page 10 a picture of “Sarah, the town that almost was.” Gates relates, “A railroad spur line was laid down from Brownsville - a distance of several miles.” The spur line ran up through Rush Run Hollow, climbing 350 feet in a little over two miles. You can still see the grade at several places in the hollow. At the end of the spur the construction was far enough along that “Sarah” was looking like a typical mine town, complete with housing for the workers. But then, Gates continues, “... someone discovered that the coal didn't belong to Frick. The tipple was demolished, the hole [mine shaft] filled in, all the buildings (including the houses) were torn down, and the rail line removed.”