Building a Bridge

So we had an irrigation ditch, a perfectly serviceable wood board for a bridge, and a lot of stone. Obviously we had to build a stone arch bridge. 

First step, digging. Frost depth here is about 5' so we have to go deep. I decided to do a full circular arch which I hope will help be more stable even though I didn't dig all the way to 5'. 

We used some gravel for a base and then a plastic culvert as a form. Abe did a bunch of the heavy lifting. 

It is certainly not pretty. The main thing I learned is that stone masonry requires a ton of skill and attention to detail. Stones are cheap but skilled labor is very difficult to find. 

Ugly but it works. Or at least it hasn't fallen over yet. In Roman times the engineer in charge of a bridge would be required to stand under it with his family while the supports were removed. We did not go that far. 

We put some soil and grass over the top of it to hide some of our bad stonework. Now we have a bridge that works way worse than the previous board, but at least it's 1000x heavier. I still have more leftover stone so watch out for the next project.