1982 US-61+151 Dubuque-Wisconsin Bridge over Mississippi River

(Bridge Hunter; John A. Weeks III; Satellite)

This bridge is also called the City Island Bridge since it crosses that island.

It has 4-lanes with a 670' navigation span and an ADT of 19,500 (2018). [Bridge Hunter] This bridge and its expressway through Dubuque was built to remove through US-61+151 and commercial (big trucks) traffic from the Julien Dubuque Bridge that also carries US-20. The Julien Bridge became congested when the Eagle Point Bridge was closed due to functional obsolescence. And that congestion was backing up into downtown Dubuque. Also, the 1943 Julien Bridge was deteriorating. [YouTube comment]

This is the second tied-arch bridge I have encountered in less than a week that was built in the early 1980s. The first was the 750' long South Pittsburg-New Hope, TN, Bridge built in 1981. So this design is a couple of decades more mature than I had thought.

John Weeks
"This is the second largest arch bridge on the Mississippi River. The I-255 Jefferson Barracks Bridge in Saint Louis is larger, while the I-280 Bridge in the Quad Cities and US-18 Marquette-Joliet Bridge just upstream in Prairie du Chien are smaller."

Street View

The regular spans are obviously steel girder spans.

Street View

EncylopediaDubuque
"Construction work had to be halted when a colony of the endangered HIGGINS' EYE CLAM was discovered. In May 1980, work was halted when a Native American burial site was discovered on the bluff where the bridge was to connect into Wisconsin. Archaeologists had missed the burial, a linear-shaped mound fifteen feet long with a cone-shaped mound at the north end, by reading their map incorrectly and looking in the wrong location. Before excavations to move the human remains could be made, a Winnebago medicine man came to sanctify the ground."