Wednesday, May 20, 2020

1936-2019 MO-47 over the Missour River at Washington, MO

(Bridge Hunter; Historic Bridges; Satellite)

A four-tower cantilever bridge was blown up in 2019 after being replaced by another UCEB (Ugly Concrete Eyesore Bridge). MoDOT has broken every link they had about this bridge. They spent $5m on bridge repairs in 2010. They claimed this bridge was as bad as the I-35W bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis to scare the public for funding. But this bridge did not have the design flaw of thin gusset plates. Even if it did, it would still have been strong enough for pedestrians and bikes. Missouri DOT has such a low opinion of the history of their bridges that they did not arrange for an HAER to be created before they blew it up. And they have deleted their page on the history. Fortunately, there are other pages about the history such as WashMoHistorical. There are so many videos of the "energetic felling" that I'm not going to bother to try to pick one.

Missouri State Archives via BridgeHunter

The trees have grown so much that it looked like a two-tower cantilever at the end of its life.
Steven Baur included three images in a comment on Bridge Hunter:
I live right next to the bridge. My family has been there longer than the bridge itself. We recently found these and other picture of the building of the bridge over the 3 year period.
Interesting Fact. There was a toll booth built on the Washington side of the bridge. There is a picture of the bridge toll booth. You would purchase tokens to get across.
On one of the pictures, there is a sign right before you step onto the unfinished bridge that stated "Unemployed, Keep Out."
This treasure is getting its second facelift now in 2009-10.
The last one was in 1995 where they raised the height by 2 feet and making the curb 6 inches instead of 12".
Enjoy
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I learned of this bridge because of these photos of the barge crane used to build the replacement.
Cody Poole commented on a post

Cody Poole commented on a post
Dennis DeBruler What is the bridge?
Cody Poole Washington bridge in Washington mo

You too can have your very own truss bridge.
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I saved a satellite image because it sill has the old bridge and shows the construction of the new bridge. The street view is already too current to see the old bridge.
Satellite
The barge crane:
Satellite

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