MS-25 Scruggs Bridge over Tennessee-TombigBee Waterway

(no Bridge Hunter; Satellite)

When I was headed north on MS-25 to Pickwick Landing Dam, I noticed a sign at a bridge indicating the bridge crossed the Tennessee-TombigBee Waterway. I recognized that as the canal between the Tennessee River and a river that goes to the Gulf of Mexico. Soon after I crossed the bridge, I noticed a sign for a boat ramp, so I went down the road to the ramp to check out the view. When I arrived by the river, there was a semi-truck crossing the bridge with a regular trailer. The trailer looking small made me appreciate how big the steel girders were. I waited for another truck to cross to catch a photo with the truck providing scale. Unfortunately, the next three trucks were empty log trucks. But the cab provides some scale. And the girders are even deeper as it crosses the piers. The size of these girders is why I'm doing yet another steel girder bridge.

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The photo also shows that we are in the canal part of the waterway since the banks are equidistant the entire length.

The long span over land on the south end must be for floods otherwise they would have just made the embankment on that side longer.

I'm surprised that a canal dug across a divide between the Tennessee River and the Gulf of Mexico would be prone to significant flooding. But this clearance gauge painted on a pier indicates that the river level can be an issue. Note that we were visiting when the Tennessee and Perl Rivers were flooding. Yet this water level seems well within the banks of the canal.

As I left the boat ramp road, I took a photo of the sign marking the facility.

The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal is a "no wake" canal. Did the USACE add rip-rap to the banks of this canal for the benefit of speed boats? This is the first time I have seen water skiing on a canal.

Screenshot

The boat ramp road also had a boat storage facility. In the Chicago area boats are stored in the winter because of ice. On the Tennessee River, boats are evidently stored because of floods and high river flows. I saw other boat storage facilities in this area.

Scruggs Bridge Boat Storage, cropped

A view in the other direction shows that the rip-rap consists of some fairly large rocks. Our van was the only visitor. The fact that the temperature was struggling to get into the 50s may be why there was no boat activity. Or maybe it was because the current on the nearby Tennessee River was high.