This week's bridge is only a few steps away from last week's bridge, this is the Rockaway Boulevard Bridge. I put the #1 up there because there's another bridge on the same street farther north. Neither bridge has an official name as far as I could find, and neither is very interesting or unique in its own right.
This bridge is more interesting and unique in its location. It's at the southern end of the tiny area sometimes called Meadowmere, which itself is a little appendix dangling from the southern tip of Rosedale, Queens, east of JFK airport. This bridge runs south from this appendix over Hook Creek to Meadowmere Park, Nassau County, where Rockaway Blvd. becomes Rockaway Turnpike. Hook Creek is one of the little inlets in the JFK area on the east side of Jamaica Bay.
There are no large parks in the immediate area, although the Rockaway beaches are just a few miles to the south. So if you happen to live in Rosedale, Laurelton, Springfield Gardens or other areas of southeastern Queens, this could be on your way if you want to run to the beach. Otherwise, there's probably not much reason for a runner to cross this bridge. It's a fixed steel and concrete bridge, I don't know when it was built or exactly how long it is (maybe 100 feet or so). But there it is.
The name of the bridge, of course, comes from the street, but the name Rockaway, which refers to the peninsula of Long Island that extends westward from more or less the area of this bridge, comes from a Lenape word, roughly "Rack-a-wak-e" which is believed to mean "place of sands."
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