1910 McKinley Bridge over the Mississippi River at St Louis+Venice

(Bridge Hunter; Historic Bridges; John A. Weeks III, John Marvig;  3D Satellite)

The bridge was built by the Illinois Electric Traction Association in 1910. Auto traffic was added during the 1930s and rail traffic ended in 1987. Finances and the complexity of multiple city and state governments caused it to be closed in Oct 2001. The governments came up with a plan to refurbish the bridge into a free, modern 2-lane crossing with a trail on the south side. Work began in 2004 and it reopened to traffic in 2007. [John Weeks] "This bridge is a massive through truss. It was designed by famous engineer Ralph Modjeski and is among the earlier of his surviving bridges." [Historic Bridges] The reconstruction cost $46m. [Jayne Matthews comment in Bridge Hunter] Both approaches were replaced by the refurbishing..

Post Card View provided by Joe Sonderman via Bridge Hunter, License: Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)

safe_image for The “Rededication” of a Bridge Between Missouri and Illinois
This was the original bridge for the 1926 Route 66 (US 66). Four years later the route was moved to the Chain of Rocks Bridge.
Photo Credit: LittleT889 (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en)

This panoramic photo taken in 1910 by A. W. Sanders shows the bridge while it was still under construction (notice the falsework under the third span). via Bridge Hunter

 

Street View

USACE broke their link

Illinois Terminal switcher eases out over the McKinley Bridge, May 1973, by Gary Forshaw via Bridge Hunter

Street View