1960+1988 I-75 DRAWBRIDGE! over Saginaw River in Zilwaukee, MI

1960 Drawbridge: (Bridge Hunter)

1988 High Bridge: (Bridge Hunter; Satellite)

Chris Childes shared
Eric Simandl Some congressman had a cousin in the drawbridge business. They weren't supposed to be on Interstate Highways.

Up North Voice posted
Up North Voice You would think twice if you knew how had they botched the construction of the new one
Joe Newcomb Sr. Up North Voice I remember. They built from both end and when they met in the middle they were way off.
Joe Newcomb Sr. Justin Gates Google Zilwaukee Bridge accident. During holidays and deer season with the original draw bridge traffic would be backed up for 30-40 miles while ships went through.
Todd Kraemer They finished the new bridge just in time to not need to send ore up to Saginaw foundry....closed...
Shelley Letts Hart Todd Kraemer actually the foundry is still open and flourishing. What did change was the delivery of raw material from barge to truck. Still, I think most of us will agree the “new” bridge facilitates better traffic flow.
Christine Rousseau I worked at Farm Bureau with Michigan Elevator next door. The bridge opened for those huge ships to come to us! Grain and supplies. Ships from Russia and China I believe. Some of their sailors would come into our retail store for gloves and rope, etc. They were smelly....lol
[I presume this is the elevator.]

MichiganHighways
The bridge was only 150 feet wide and several ships actually hit the bridge, causing damage and additional tie-ups on the freeway as well. To top it off, shipping traffic actually quadrupled in the years after the bridge was completed and the back-ups on the freeway reached three to four hours in duration and often up to 30 miles in length. The worst back-ups, of course, occurred during major holiday weekends and during the fall hunting season.
Michigan Memories posted
The Zilwaukee Bridge spanning the Saginaw River in 1979.

Nolan Skip Raspbury LaFramboise II: It looks like the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredge Lyman. Lyman and Haines dredged channels back in those days. They traveled back and forth so often they often blocked auto traffic. I dealt with them on a regular basis on the Rouge River going to and coming from work.

Phil Hutter shared

Michigan Memories posted
The Zilwaukee Bridge spanning the Saginaw River in the 1970s.

Chris Williams posted
I originally took my drone out to take some pics and videos of the USS Edson to practice and was treated to an unexpected guest. Hello there, Algoma Compass!

As one can image, there were a lot of rear-end accidents. [MDOT via report2]

In one case, the state police had it raised to stop a criminal that was fleeing on I-75. And there were allisions by freighters in at least 1960 and 1967. [CickOnDetroit]

The new bridge has a vertical clearance of 125' (38m) to accommodate salties from the St. Lawrence Seaway. [MDOT via report2] That height would explain why I'm reading comments about people being scared to use the bridge. It did make a list of dangerous roads.

Photo taken by Richard Doody in November 1983 via Bridge Hunter

In April 2008, a scheduled $3.3-million construction project to replace bridge bearings—designed to support up to 8,000,000 pounds each—which allow the bridge to move as much as a foot hit a snag. Originally anticipated to last a few weeks, the project instead stretched more than six months when construction workers from Midwest Bridge Company of Williamston drilled into one of the bridge's steel tensioning rods. Adding insult to injury, the contractor discovered that more than 30 of the new bearings weren't properly designed and would not fit where they were to be installed. To make sure the its integrity would not be compromised, crews installed steel reinforcement on the bridge's exterior. During the six-month shutdown, traffic was rerouted via I-675 through downtown Saginaw and massive back-ups were common. Traffic began using the Zilwaukee Bridge again on October 1, 2008.
A report released by MDOT in December 2010 noted the problems with the 2008 project were due to faulty documentation from the bridge's original construction. "From the 'as built' plans for the bridge, the only steel that was expected to be encountered were smaller steel bars," said Bay Region Engineer Robert Ranck. "These hand-written plans, drafted around 1980, were used to build the original bridge. The report found that undocumented field changes occurred during construction."
[Another repair] project ran from April 2013 through 2015. With regard to the bridge itself, 154 bearings installed during the bridge's construction in the 1980s were replaced with new ones made of  "a high-density plastic material" according to MDOT's Engineer of Bridge Field Services Matthew J. Chynoweth. [The original bearings were made with "stainless steel, neoprene and teflon" [MDOT via report4]] The bearings—designed to support up to 8 million pounds each—require replacement because of normal wear and tear since the bridge's opening in 1987.  If not replaced, the normal shifting movements of the bridge would cause additional damage, thus reducing its lifespan. Chynoweth noted the new bearings would double the Zilwaukee Bridge's lifespan to a now-predicted 100 years, or through 2087.
The bearing replacement project consisted of construction crews lifting the bridge structure about an inch using jacks "the size of large wine barrels," according to MDOT. Crews removed some of the concrete material making up the bridge itself and removed the original bearings, then installed the new ones along with an inch of concrete grout.

[MichiganHighway]

To replace the worn out expansion bearings, they needed to lift the superstructure off the substructure at every pier and expansion joint location, which is 75 times. Some of the lifts are over 17,000,000 pounds. [TCtimes, paycount]

MDOT via report4

When the 940', 1700-ton launching girder is over a pier, the expansion joint is immobilized using a block of high-strength concrete. On Aug 28, 1982, while a concrete segment was being transported, the immobilization block for span 11 was crushed, fractured the pier's footing, and the span tilted. [MDOT via report4] They were able to build new pilings and a footing and salvage the pier columns and the span. [MDOT via report5]

MDOT via report7

Martha Smith Washington posted
THIS SHIP IS GOING THROUGH THE OLD SAGINAW I-75 DRAWBRIDGE. THE ZILLWAUKEE BRIDGE IS BEING BUILT BEHIND IT. 1980-83 ERA...

B Tupper Upham

It’s an Erie Sand sandsucker..

Martha Smith Washington

Author

B Tupper Upham

 So they were dredging the river under the two bridges

B Tupper Upham

Martha Smith Washington

 Probably out in Saginaw Bay, and bringing the sand to Wirt.

B Tupper Upham

Niagara.

Martha Smith Washington

Author

B Tupper Upham

 SO THEY HARVESTED THE SAND FROM OUT IN THE BAY TO SELL FROM THE WIRT STONE DOCK???

Fred Bultman

Martha Smith Washington

 yes

B Tupper Upham

https://www.facebook.com/396752837032187/videos/441888996435676/?vh=e&extid=7IhGnx1dGJUAXsMf [a video of the boat going under the bridge]

Or the GM foundry further upstream.

John Cull

The Niagara used to take sand up to the General Motors foundry.

David McDonald

Before the Niagara began gathering sand out in Saginaw Bay making at least two trips a day to the new GM foundry, the I 75 draw bridge wasn’t a problem. because ships seldom came that far up the river. But the traffic jams on I 75 due to the frequent trips by Niagara forced the need for a new high rise bridge.

Update:

Ana Roy posted

Before the Zilwaukee bridge was opened to traffic in December of 1987 a draw bridge was built over the Saginaw River for I-75. It opened daily for the Niagara nicknamed “The Sandsucker” It sucked sand off the bottom of Lake Huron for the General Motors Iron Foundry and traveled to Saginaw nearly every day. When the draw bridge opened for ships, traffic would be backed up for miles, especially on a holiday weekend. It took nine years to build the current Zilwaukee Bridge. The ironic thing is by the time the bridge was finished, the foundry no longer used the Niagara to get sand and ships occasionally came that far up into the river.

I grew up in the shadow of the bridge in the the township of Carrollton. I still remember the traffic backups as a kid and my dad traveling through downtowns Saginaw to avoid the highway. I still live close to the Z-bridge, but I rarely travel over it because of where my house is located off I-675. I could not even imagine what traffic would be like if the old draw bridge was there today and opened on a holiday weekend.

P.S. An interesting thing to note is how Zilwaukee got its name. In 1854 Zilwaukee Township was formed and as the story goes the village was named Zilwaukee with the hopes it would confuse immigrants coming into New York thinking they are going to Milwaukee Wisconsin.

Nick Breznai shared

Anne H. Baker posted with the same comment as Ana Roy

MichiganHighways_aerial2

Peter Beauregard commented on a post about the Mackinac Bridge: "Much better than the Zilwaukee Bridge. Remember that debacle?"

Construction on the high bridge started in 1972 and was progressing on schedule for a 1983 completion. But then, "On August 28, 1982, temporary compression blocks began to crush while a concrete segment was being transported, causing a 300-foot-long section of the bridge deck to sag five feet on one end, and rise three-and-a-half feet on the other end. It caused serious damage. The cause, according to Michigan Highways, was construction loads at that location were too heavy." The northbound lanes finally opened in 1987, and the southbound lanes opened in 1988.  [CickOnDetroit]

Design: Segmental concrete using 1,592 pre-cast concrete segments fabricated in a plant built on the bridge site. Each segment averages 10 feet in length, is 73.5 feet wide and weighs up to 160 tons. They are erected using a post-tensioned system of steel cables, supplemented by epoxy for joint sealing. There are 25 spans on the northbound bridge and 26 on the southbound bridge, varying in length from 155 to 392 feet. In addition, the bridge will have a 405-foot long, three-span ramp bridge to carry traffic onto the southbound roadway. [report10]

A new contractor was hired to finish the bridge after the 1982 accident. They chose to continue with the original method of "using the existing large and heavy erection truss and placing segments by the balanced cantilever method." [OPACengineers] Two photos from that webpage:

1

2

 

Keith M Broun posted
The Zilwaukee Bridge being constructed in the early 80's.

2017:

mlive, this webpage has several more construction photos
"The total cost of the bridge project was around $127 million, with the federal funds paying for 90 percent of it, according to MDOT records. The original bid for the project was $76.8 million. The first contract totaled $75 million. Repairs totaled $6.8 million. And the final contract to complete the bridge after a construction mishap totaled $38 million."
They did more bearings replacement during 2013-15.

mtu, p13, this report has lots of construction photos
Segmented box-girder construction is commonplace now, but it was bleeding edge in America in the 1970s. And this project bled. The launching girder induces additional loads on the piers.

 

mtu, p68

In 2022, the cause was described differently.

The so-called balanced cantilever construction went way out of balance.

“There were engineering calculations done that said ‘this needs to be here’ and ‘this load needs to be here’ and ‘this counterweight needs to be here6′ and it simply was not followed,” former MDOT Chief Bridge Engineer Matt Chynoweth said.

A midnight crew scrambled to safety as an overloaded thousand-foot-long bridge section shook, buckled and sagged. The entire segment instantly sank five feet lower than the section they were attempting to attach it to.

Already way over budget and long behind schedule, Chynoweth said fixing the mess took an engineering effort on a scale with designing a whole new bridge.

“We lifted and tilted and jacked it into place. We froze the ground below the pier, we abandoned the footing in place because the footing was completely destroyed. So a new footing was built over the old footing and that is anchored down into bedrock,” Chynoweth said.

[ClickOnDetroit_retrospective]

In 2023, they are adding rip-rock around the piers to help prevent erosion of the piers. [wnem]