Clinton County
Thirteen people on a plant three quarters of a mile out
The plant here works crushed stone under Heidelberg Materials Northeast, with 13 people on the books at Mine Safety and Health Administration. It sits 0.76 miles from the centre of this place, so the plant and the village are effectively one address.
Thirteen is the median for a Pennsylvania crushed-stone quarry, so that is an ordinary-sized crew rather than a small one.
A county with almost no county bridges
Clinton County maintains two bridges in the entire National Bridge Inventory, and neither of them fails the load field — so the county-maintained posting share, which is the usual shorthand for local road risk, means almost nothing here.
It is not unique. Five of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties maintain no bridges at all — Centre, Erie, Juniata, Potter and Warren — and six more maintain between one and four, this one among them. In a sixth of the state that figure is undefined or close to it.
So the number to read is the ten-mile count, not the county share. The local network here belongs to the townships and to the state.
What the ten-mile circle actually holds
Those townships own most of what binds. Within 10 miles the National Bridge Inventory records 152 structures; four are posted for load and six are coded below legal loads, none county-maintained and four on township roads, and the nearest is 1.52 miles out.
The lowest that clears the commercial floor is 15.4 tonnes, about 17.0 US tons, which admits roughly 4.4 tonnes of stone over the 11.0-tonne tare of an empty tandem dump.
That is a genuinely reduced load rather than a token one — more than the eastern end of the state allows and less than a full one — on a route that has one such crossing rather than a dozen.
The river towns
Those lanes run down the West Branch. The Lock Haven yards lie about 3.3 miles north, Snavely’s Mill about 6.0 miles south-west at Mill Hall, the Lock Haven reserve centre about 7.1 miles north-east at McElhattan and the Avis yard about 10.1 miles north-east.
Stone starts further out: P Stone about 12.3 miles east at Jersey Shore with nine people, Con-Stone about 12.9 miles south at Aaronsburg with twelve, and the Bellefonte pits about 17.0 miles south-west.
With one binding crossing rather than a network of them, a truck off this ground more often carried a proper load, so the wear reads as ordinary road wear rather than the springs-and-hoist pattern of the tight eastern circles.
- The binding crossing in this circle clears at 15.4 tonnes, so some lanes took a part load and others did not.
- I am well out of the village.Fine, and the Lock Haven end of the valley is no problem.
Between the Lock Haven yards and P Stone at Jersey Shore they turn up steadily.