Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 22, 1993 TAG: 9301220193
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
A MAJOR SPAN, MAN
To some people, it didn't look like a Boy Scout project.It would be a 50-foot wood and steel bridge, spanning a creek on the Huckleberry Trail. A bridge stout enough to carry walkers, runners, bicyclists, baby strollers - or all of them at once - over the Slate Branch Creek without a crack or a murmur. A bridge solid enough to last, tough enough to be safe.
A good bridge.
Enter Matthew Walker - a slight, 16-year-old aspiring Eagle Scout with a shank of blond hair across his forehead and a taste for heavy metal music.
Walker needed a hefty project to satisfy his Eagle Scout requirements.
The Huckleberry Trail needed a hefty bridge.
And yet . . .
"To be honest with you, we were a little skeptical, because he had chosen one of the more difficult crossings," said Bill Ellenbogen, president of Friends of the Huckleberry, a group of volunteers working on the trail. "But as we got to working with him, we realized this was a really fine young man."
Ellenbogen said Walker is in charge of organizing the volunteer effort to build the bridge, but he'll have help with the actual construction.
Walker, who hopes to study civil engineering in college, has enlisted the aid of students and engineering faculty from Virginia Tech, as well as his family and other members and supervisors of Boy Scout Troop 152.
The Huckleberry Trail is a partly completed pathway for pedestrians and bicyclists that will connect Virginia Tech and Blacksburg to Christiansburg. It follows the abandoned Virginia Anthracite Coal and Railway Co. railroad bed.
Years ago, the line was used by Virginia Tech's Corps of Cadets to travel between Roanoke and the Blacksburg campus. The nickname "Huckleberry Trail" comes from the students' habit of jumping off the slow-moving train to pick wild huckleberries, then jumping back on.
The first phase of the project will extend from the end of the existing Huckleberry Trail on the Tech campus to near Montgomery Regional Hospital. The trail eventually will stretch to New River Valley Mall.
The Virginia Department of Highways and a local engineering firm, Anderson & Associates, have built or will build most of the bridges involved in Phase 1, but Ellenbogen said he nearly had despaired of finding someone to do the last one, near Merrimac and Hightop roads.
That is, until Walker came along.
Walker - who numbers among his hobbies soccer, reading horror and spy novels, and listening to the rock group Pearl Jam - has been in Scouting for eight years, counting the Cub Scouts. He needed to organize and complete a major project to become an Eagle, scouting's highest rank.
Walker contacted some volunteers working on the Huckleberry Trail, who suggested he build a temporary bridge across the Slate Branch creek outside Blacksburg as his project. The bridge was to serve volunteers working on the trail itself.
But after studying the site, Walker decided it would be nearly as easy to build a permanent bridge as it would a temporary one.
Scouting authorities, meanwhile, found the bridge more than adequate for an Eagle Scout project.
"Their only concern was that it might be too big, and that I might not be really organizing," Walker recalled. "That I might have too much help. I've tried to do it mostly by myself."
True, Walker has had assistance with much of the technical work.
He said the engineering department at Tech helped him with the plans. As of late last month, the bridge still was on the drawing board, although Walker hopes to have it finished by the end of February.
To build the bridge, Walker must plant a support halfway across the creek bed and flood plain. The job will require a power drill and generator, so he will need help. Scouts are not permitted to use power tools.
But Walker himself has worked to round up the materials for the 50-foot long, 6-foot-wide bridge - the railroad ties, the steel rods and joists, the driving pins, bearing pads and various building materials. The bridge materials were all donated.
"Most people for a good cause are willing to help out," said his father, Andrew Walker - who with other family members has helped his son clear brush and rubble from the bridge site and accomplish other related chores.
"It sort of restores my faith in people when you find out how many are willing to help on something like this."
Walker also has handled the correspondence with Montgomery County officials, who must approve the project.
County officials said they still are working with Walker on final plans for the bridge.