There is also a railroad bridge across the canal.
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| MDOT Bourne is in the foreground, and Sagamore is in the background. |
Both bridges have the same design, and they were "recognized as 1934 "Most Beautiful Steel Bridge" in Class A by the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC)." [both BridgeHunters] Both bridges have a main span of 616' and were rehabilitated in 1981.
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| 2010 photo by Jann Mayer via BridgeHunter-Bourne, License: Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) |
I learned of the Bourne Bridge because it was in the background of this photo of the Cape Cod Canal RR Bridge.
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| Steve Belcher posted, cropped Winter has arrived - Good morning from the Cape Cod Canal vertical lift RR bridge |
The Sagamore doesn't need approach trusses like the Bourne because it is built between two hills.
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| 2021 Photo by Josh Schmid via BridgeHunter-sagamore |
You can tell that Cape Code was a tourist area because both BridgeHunter pages have several postcard images.
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| Boston Public Library Flickr via BridgeHunter-sagamore, License: Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) |
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| Underestimated Arsenal posted “Across the Canal with the Greatest of Ease,” a Boston Sunday Globe headline read on 2 June 1935, three weeks before the U.S. Army opened the Sagamore Bridge over the Cape Cod Canal in Massachusetts. The headline was about drivers. The Army's own history of the canal is about ships. Congress had told the Army Corps of Engineers on 31 March 1928 to operate and improve a canal that was failing. August Belmont's company had opened it in 1914, a toll waterway 100 feet wide, and it never carried the traffic its investors had expected. The Corps ended the tolls and set out to learn why ships stayed away. One concern, the Corps' history records, was the moveable bridge spans. So the Corps let the land decide. It picked two naturally elevated places along the canal and built fixed bridges there, each with a main span of 616 feet between supports and a clearance of 135 feet above mean high water, high enough for large ocean-going ships to pass beneath without a span ever being raised. The Sagamore stands between two hills and, unlike its twin, the Bourne Bridge, has no deck truss approach spans. Fay, Spofford and Thorndike of Boston designed both highway bridges and supervised the building, with the Boston architects Cram and Ferguson advising on how they should look. Work began in December 1933. The money came from the Public Works Administration, whose rules said that wherever practical, hand labor should be used instead of machinery, to provide as many jobs as possible. By the Corps' count, the three bridge jobs employed about 700 workers. A Corps park ranger has said a common laborer earned 50 cents an hour and a skilled man $1.50, and that some of the steelworkers came in from Pennsylvania. Carl A. Chase of Taunton worked on the bridges. In an undated letter kept by the Corps, he listed his jobs: a crew that built the plant making sand and crushed stone for the concrete, a truck carrying that concrete to the foundations, and a place on the tag line of girders being lifted, steadying them so they did not twist. He wrote that the ironworkers started from each side of the canal and built the spans out over the water. “When the steel met in the middle, there was great rejoicing and I imagine several parties.” The bridges were dedicated on 22 June 1935. In the years that followed, the Corps widened and deepened the canal itself, to 480 feet wide and 32 feet deep by 1940. Its history says that broader, deeper, safer two-way canal drew three times as many vessels and eight times as much cargo as Belmont's canal had in its last year. The Sagamore Bridge still carries U.S. Route 6 over the canal, its main span 135 feet above high water. One more detail from Carl Chase's letter: a small pine tree was placed at the highest point of the steel, and when people on shore saw it, they knew the two halves had been joined. He does not say which of the two highway bridges he meant. The photograph is a United States Army Air Forces print from the series "Airscapes" of American and Foreign Areas, held by the National Archives (identifier 23941259, filed under Massachusetts, Cape Cod Canal). The record does not name the photographer. The date, 20 May 1935, is read from figures printed on the print itself; the archive gives only a span of years. The Army's own typed caption reads "new Sagamore Bridge". That puts the picture about a month before the dedication on 22 June 1935, though a Cape newspaper says both bridges had already passed government inspection in December 1934. What the photo cannot show is the reason for the post. There is no ship in the frame, only the bridge, the empty channel and the hills. I cropped away the paper mount and the caption strip printed along the bottom edge of the picture, and changed nothing else: no retouching, and the scan was already greyscale. The Bourne Bridge, the Sagamore's twin, has the same main span of 616 feet. The Corps says the two differ in their approach spans, and a Cape newspaper gives the total lengths as 1,408 feet for the Sagamore and 2,384 feet for the Bourne. Where the words on the photo come from: A hundred and forty feet (140 feet): the Army Corps of Engineers' history of the canal, which says the old bridges "provided navigational openings of 140 feet". GBH News wrote in 2025 that boats had to hold their course in strong currents through an opening only one quarter the width it is today. Waiting in a swift current for the span to rise: the same Corps history, which says the moveable spans were normally kept in the lowered position. The questionnaire: the Corps' history says it was sent to shipping companies "to find out why various vessel types were avoiding the Canal". This is the thinnest claim in the post. It rests on the Corps' own account, no second source repeats it, and I found no record of what the companies answered. The post says only what the Corps says it did and which concern it names. Two figures differ between sources. The Corps counts about 700 workers on the three bridge jobs, a local historian says about 900 locally, and a 1935 Globe count as quoted by a Cape newspaper was 1,200 men on the job. The Corps gives the widened canal as 480 feet; the American Canal Society index lists 540. The long caption uses the Corps' numbers. Its three times as many vessels and eight times as much cargo is the Corps' figure for the whole improved canal, not for the bridges alone. The people: the Corps built the bridges with Public Works Administration money; Fay, Spofford and Thorndike of Boston designed them; Cram and Ferguson advised on their appearance; hiring went first to Bourne, then Sandwich and Wareham, before it spread wider, with skilled steelworkers coming from Pennsylvania. Carl Chase of Taunton was one of the men who built them. The bridge stands in Sagamore, Massachusetts. The Cape Cod Canal Visitor Center in Sandwich keeps an exhibit of photographs of the building of the bridges. |
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| Brian Lutton commented on the above post Current day. |
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| This is one of several historical photos on the HistoricBridges-bourne page. The HistoricBridges-sagamore page also has some historical photos. Obviously the canal was widened in 1935 because that is when all three of these canal bridges were built. Both vehicle bridges replaced trunnion bridges. And this photo shows that the railroad bridge replaced a Strauss jack-knife bridge. |
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| USACE, Cape Cod Canal posted Passing the Sagamore Bridge, crowds lined the bridge and Canal banks to cheer on the parade of ships. Douglas Butler shared Sagamore Scherzer Double Leaf Bascule Bridge Bourne, MA. U.S Army Corps of Engineers, Cape Cod Canal. |
A five-year Massachusetts study concludes that both bridges should be replaced for about $1b. It would replace today's 48' wide 4-lane bridges with 138' wide 6-lane bridges and restructure the roads at the ends of the bridges. The USACE, which would fund the replacement of the bridges themselves, is still studying replacement vs. major refurbishment. [May 2019: CapeNews] On Apr 3, 2020 the USACE decided to replace the bridges. [MDOT-background]
Apr 2025 update: The proposed Sagamore Bridge replacement:
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| 8:55 video |
This video is about the Cape Cod Canal.
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| 45:02 video @ 0:05 |
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| Facebook Reel |
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