Looking beyond the Falls to Canada from the bridge connecting Green Island to the US mainland.
There are 7 bridges connecting the islands above Niagara Falls to each other and to the US side of the river. The American Falls Bridge is the only one that permits public auto traffic. The two connecting Green Island to the US mainland and to Goat Island were originally designed to accommodate auto traffic, but are now closed to public vehicles. The remainder were designed for pedestrians only.
American Falls Bridge
Bridge between Green Island and US Mainland
Bridge between Goat Island and Green Island
Bridge between Three Sisters Island and Goat Island
Bridge between middle Three Sisters Island and northern Three Sisters Island
Bridge between southern Three Sisters Island and middle Three Sisters Island
A year ago, I experienced cascades of emotion and healing at Niagara Falls.
As with many people, 2025 was an incredibly stressful year for me, partly due to factors affecting US society at large and partly due to unique personal factors. Among the personal factors was the difficult illness and death of an aunt, who I felt a unique sympathetic connection to and who I felt I had only just started to really get to know right before she became ill. I was staying in Niagara Falls to attend her memorial service held in a town a few miles downriver.
I had been to Niagara Falls many times before, but most of those trips were before I turned 12 and I was at the mercy of my parents’ choices. I remember once having a conversation about what side of the Falls we were going to visit that time. We had been enough times to both sides that I had a preference. And while I don’t remember which side I preferred, it was the opposite of the one my parents preferred. The last time I visited Niagara Falls, I was 18, on a weekend adventure with my dormmates, in the middle of the night in the middle of winter.
Twenty years later, visiting the Falls for the first time when I had full control over the choices of the how, when, and where I explored, it was like visiting for the first time ever. Some sights were vaguely familiar, particularly close to the Falls, but there was so much that I didn’t recognize.
Niagara Falls is so much more than the Falls themselves. Frederick Law Olmsted recognized this and successfully fought to create Niagara Falls State Park to protect the sublime encounters with nature against the fast encroaching industries spurred by the power of the water.
While most of the industries are now gone and Urban Renewal rushed through much of downtown Niagara Falls leaving behind soul-crushing expanses of wide, empty roads surrounding empty islands of parking lots and vacant lots; the river rushing around islands of soul-soothing woods on its way to the roaring cataract remains much as it was 100 or even 150 years ago.
As I walked down paths and over bridges designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, I felt that I could see what he saw and feel what he felt.1 Then, as I crossed a bridge to the Three Sisters Islands, I felt my aunt and uncle join me.
A few years before on the day before we were to leave for my uncle’s memorial, I developed a stomach flu and had to stay home. I was able to watch the live stream of the event as I lay miserable in my bed and I posted some thoughts on his death, but my mourning felt incomplete. As I walked in my aunt & uncle’s footsteps across the Three Sisters Islands, taking photographs of the same views that appealed to the three of us, this felt like the true moment of memorialization. While we held different views of God and religion, we were aligned on the majesty and wonder of this special place. This place doesn’t hide from the raw and the rough of life, instead it shows that peace and beauty live intermingled with tumult and destruction.
And, by the way, I was right about the flamingo boats. Frederick Law Olmsted hated the Maid of the Mist and the spectacularization of nature. He definitely would have hated to see flamingo boats treading the water of his lake in Buffalo. ↩︎
The Oakland neighborhoods in Pittsburgh’s East End are the home to a number of institutions. Among them are Carlow College, the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt), Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), multiple UPMC hospitals, the Phipps Conservatory (Phipps), the Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children, and the Carnegie Institute complex (housing the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History, the main Carnegie Library, and the Carnegie Music Hall). Institutions seem to have a predilection for pedestrian bridges and the ones in Oakland are no exception.
My first encounter with an elevated, enclosed pedestrian bridge was one of the ones in the UPMC hospital complex. The summer I turned six, my grandfather was admitted to the hospital and our trip to Pittsburgh to visit him included many impressionable firsts for me:
First time in a hospital
First time to walk across an enclosed, elevated pedestrian bridge
First time to encounter trick candles on a birthday cake
While I can now appreciate the importance of an enclosed pedestrian bridge to transport patients between facilities in a hospital without having to expose them to the unregulated outside air, I found it an odd and foreign structure when I was six. Decades later, outside of the use for hospital patients, I still find enclosed pedestrian bridges to be odd and foreign. I much prefer getting a breath of fresh air (even if it’s below freezing) to the often stale, manufactured air of these bridges.
Williamsport is a town of just over 25,000 along the upper Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. I discovered it as an excellent stop-over point to break up the drive home from my relatives in Rutland (where I’ve explored public art, a bridge, covered bridges, and the drawing of municipal boundaries). I enjoy a historic hotel, good restaurants, and a great bookstore (particularly useful when I’ve run out of reading on a trip) whenever I stop in Williamsport.
On a recent trip, I decided to walk the Market Street and Maryland Street Bridges over the Susquehanna while I was there. I took the walk in the morning, leaving my hotel shortly before 8:00 AM, so that I’d be back before checkout time. The sun was already high enough in the sky to be uncomfortably warm and there was very little relief from shade over the bridges and along the river. I spent most of the walk looking forward to when it would be over. A nice riverside trail connected the two bridges. I walked the southern route and frequently wished that the trees came closer to the trail to provide some relief from the sun. As such, I did not take the time to stop and read the informational signs about the region’s history in lumbering or about the birds that might be seen along the river.
While walking from the Rosslyn Metro Station to the Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge over the Potomac, we walked over a surprise bridge. If we had chosen to walk over on the upriver side of the Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge, I may have completely missed that we walked a bridge over I-66.
Gateway Park is a “cap” over the freeway and is both a park and a bridge. Unlike Pittsburgh’s CAP or Frankie Pace Park, Gateway Park was built in the 1980s at the same time as the freeway it covers. It also distinguishes itself from Pittsburgh’s park/bridge by appearing to be fully integrated with the surrounding city and having well-utilized programming.
For years, even before I started urbantraipsing, I thought nothing of walking from transit stop to transit stop, bridge to bridge, as I explore and encounter the expected and unexpected nooks and crannies of a city. That way of life came crashing to a devastating halt in the fall of 2023 when I developed Long COVID.
Six months passed.
And then a year.
The return to “normal” my doctors promised seemed increasingly unlikely. But a return to functional seemed within reach. The question remained: did urbantraipsing fall within this new functionality?
After a few local test excursions, I felt physically and mentally strong enough to test travel. In April 2025, I took a long-overdue trip to visit my brother in Washington, DC. On this trip, I encountered some great bridges and learned that, much like other activities, with modification and accommodation urbantraipsing is a way of life I can continue.
The open, through-arch Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge was one of our expected encounters. I probably would have been ecstatic about the unexpected benches in the lookouts between the arches under previous circumstances. After all, it isn’t every day that you find a bench on a bridge. However, in the past, I probably would have just said “that’s cool,” photographed them, and moved on. Instead, I took full advantage of these seats for one of my rest and rehydration breaks. This slow down is the reason I spotted the Yard Park Bridge, a bridge I definitely needed to add to my collection.
Perhaps slowing down and being more intentional to accommodate my Long COVID needs will continue to add depth to my urbantraipsing experiences.
Ironically, a few days after my catch-up post about the Murray Avenue Bridge in Squirrel Hill went live, I unexpectedly found myself walking that bridge for the first time since 2012. The bridge looks mostly the same, slightly rusted but presumable functional as it hasn’t collapsed or been closed following a regular inspection. The stairs have been replaced though. I didn’t have a reason to go down them in 2012 and didn’t feel comfortable testing them out for the heck of it then. In 2025, the Urban Hike walk I was on came at the bridge from the street below and we climbed up the newish, solid-looking steps; a few of us (me included) pausing “for the view” on our way up.
The before and after photo pairs below don’t exactly line up, given the different angles and orientations of the photos, but it seemed a good opportunity to try out the image compare option. Before: August 2012, After: August 2025.
Duck Hollow is a mini neighborhood where Frick Park’s Nine Mile Run meets the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh. A handful of houses sit in the Hollow accessible only by an old one-lane bridge on a small spur of Second Avenue or the new bridge on McFarren Street that opened in 2020 (though it was only 2 years old at the time of the Bridge Report and presumably doesn’t see much traffic, it only received an overall grade of “good”). The houses of Duck Hollow are separated from the river by the railroad that crosses Nine Mile Run on the bridge above Second Avenue. These photos are from a walk my COVID-pod and I took of Frick Park in Fall 2020.
Chicago first drew my attention to how we layer our cities. I wasn’t thinking of this theme when I was in Buffalo, but when I reviewed my photos, this bridge-walking photo caught my eye as another iteration of city layering. Buffalo’s layering is more subtle than Chicago’s, but like Chicago, there are a variety of uses/activities at each level.
Underground
The underground layer in this photo is the railroad tracks, which appear to be the tracks the Amtrak uses as the station is nearby. At a similar elevation and a few blocks to the right, the Erie Canal and Lake Erie are other uses at this layer’s level. Part of the canal has been converted into a paved recreation area with skating rink. At the point where this picture is taken, the light rail system is at street level and immediately behind me, but toward the northern end of downtown, it slips underground. Exploration of other potential underground uses such as tunnels, parking garages, or businesses was beyond the scope of this trip.
Street Level
Again, where this photo was taken, the street level includes pedestrian, vehicular, and light transit activity. Although, when I was passing on a Sunday in the late afternoon approaching dinnertime, there was very little of any activity at this location. I had encountered a fair number of people enjoying the indoor and outdoor amenities at Canalside and once back in the heart of downtown there was some activity at street level. This point along the “barrier” to the waterfront felt a little like a no-man’s land.
Pie in the Sky
In this picture, the upper layer of the city is the overpass (or bridge) for I-190. Just on the other side of the overpass the upper layer changes into the Seneca One office and apartment tower that straddles Main Street and has beautiful street-level murals. Downtown has many skyscrapers and other large buildings that contribute to the upper layer of the city, but the outstanding feature for me of Buffalo’s upper layer is the web of overpasses.
As I continue to explore the question “What is a Bridge?” I find that there is a structural, or form, perspective and a more philosophical, or function, perspective. In asking if the building in Chambersburg pictured above is a bridge, I earlier came to the conclusion that it is. That answer required searching beyond two standard dictionary definitions both of which required that the structure carry a path or roadway to qualify as a bridge. The Encyclopedia Britannica did not have that qualification and so I embraced their definition as I felt that this Chambersburg building and the backyards and buildings I discuss in Millvale should be called bridges. Structurally, these may be bridges, but philosophically are they bridges? Does a bridge need to allow movement across it to fulfill the purpose of a bridge?
Up to this point, I’ve been primarily focused on Merriam-Webster’s definition of bridge as a structure found in the built environment. There are many other definitions and types of bridges under their entry for “bridge,” starting with a time, place, or means of connection or transition. Other examples of “bridges” include the bridge of a nose, the bridge of a violin and other string instruments, the passage of music called a bridge that links two sections of the piece, a dental bridge, and a ship’s bridge. For each of these examples, the function of connection or transition seems to be the crucial part that makes them bridges.
In Buffalo, I also questioned the different between a structural bridge and a philosophical bridge. I proposed then that an overpass may be structurally a bridge, but philosophically if the primary purpose of the structure is to pass over instead of to connect then it is not a bridge.
Putting these ideas together, there is a difference between a structural bridge and the concept of a bridge. The Chambersburg and Millvale examples are structurally bridges, I believe, but their main purpose is to expand the buildable area. They are not intended to create connection and therefore they are not bridges.
