1928+1990 US-22 Bridges over Ohio River between Steubenville and Weirton

1928: (Bridge Hunter; Historic Bridge) Fort Steuben Bridge

1990: (Bridge Hunter; B&T, Blog; John Weeks is "under construction"; 3D Satellite) Veterans Memorial Bridge

Opey Patrick Sr. posted, cropped
Fort Steuben Bridge.over the Ohio River
Bob Marshall: February 21, 2012

Regular and slow speed 1:57 YouTube video of the "energetic felling" 

HistoricBridges has a copy of the same video and calls it the official ODOT video. I quote from HistoricBridges: " 'When ODOT's not out plowing snow or repairing the roads we also enjoy blowing up old bridges.' -Quote from Ohio Department of Transportation describing the official video of the demolition."

Boston Public Library Flickr Photo via BridgeHunter-1928, License: Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)

The tower certainly looks strong with all of those diagonals. HistoricBridges points out the arch in the lower cross member.

2010 Photo by Jason Smith via BridgeHunter-1928
[One of Jason's many photos on BridgeHunter-1928 shows the pin connection of eye bars. But this photo shows that they use cables for the suspension. So I don't know where the eye bars are used.]

West Virginia Life posted

Old bridge from Weirton, West Virginia, to Steubenville, Ohio

Photo by Paul McClure DC on flickr

History of the Ohio Valley posted
Traffic on the W.Va. side of the Fort Steuben Toll Bridge (1928-2009) - ca. late 1940s.
Dale Gaynor: Only one bridge left from Weirton to Steubenville the WV ODOT shut the Market Street Bridge down 2 days ago.: Only one bridge left from Weirton to Steubenville the WV ODOT shut the Market Street Bridge down 2 days ago. [Mid Dec, 2023]
Rj Williams: Dale Gaynor always add a few minutes and take the new glorious savior bridge in Wellsburg.

 

Danield Steiman commented on the above post
Fort Steuben Bridge

EngineeringRecord via HistoricBridges, p3

This answers the eye bar question, they were part of the anchorage.

EngineeringRecord via HistoricBridges, p4

The above anchorage was on the Ohio side. The eye bar chain is much more extensive on the WV side.

EngineeringRecord via HistoricBridges, p6

The cable-stay bridge was built in 1990, and comments in BridgeHunter-1990 report that it is falling apart already.

Photo via LC-DIG-highsm- 31930 (ONLINE) [P&P]
Credit line: West Virginia Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Carol M. Highsmith's photographs are in the public domain.

Street View

WV
The final construction cost was $90m. Engineering studies began in 1961 and the 1970s was spent processing red tape. Construction started in 1979. So it took over a decade to buld. The tower is 360' tall. "When the bridge was under construction, only three cable-stayed steel girder trusses existed outside of Europe or Japan—in Sitka, Alaska;  Luling, Louisiana, and Quincy, Illinois."
[The railroad bridge in the foreground is NS/PRR (Panhandle)]

It has six 12-foot lanes [WV]. yet on a 2022 accessed satellite image I could find only one car and one truck using it. Sure enough, Robert C. Byrd helped get funding for this example of pork barrel extravaganzas. 

I generously count eight vehicles using the bridge in this photo.

MichaelBakerIntl
[This source says the tower is 431' above the river. The WV Department of Highways hired the company that built the bridge to do an inspection. What are the odds that they are going to be honest about problems in what they built? Using the contractor that built a bridge to inspect the bridge strikes me as being rather stupid on WVDOH's part.]

So the old bridge was not torn down when the new bridge opened. It was simply allowed to deteriorate until it was no longer safe for traffic. What I don't understand is why a bridge that can no longer carry traffic can't still carry pedestrians and bikes. To rub salt into the wound, HistoricBridges reports that ODOT, after spending $2.3m to destroy the bridge, spent $250,000 to build a new truss for an overlook. Didn't it occur to anyone in the halls of the ODOT office that the old bridge would have made a fantastic overlook? Or, as HistoricBridges suggests, reuse part of the stiffening truss for the new overlook.

This is what $250,000 gets you. Now I can see why they didn't reuse part of the old truss. It would not have fit in that little space.

Satellite

Street View

I had noticed that "a hazard to navigation" was not used as an excuse for the demolition. In fact, I never did see a statement from the ODOT as to why it needed to be destroyed other than they like blowing up bridges. I can understand why it was closed to traffic because it costs money to maintain it. But I would think it would have to do a lot more rusting before it couldn't hold up itself and people. Since the bridge made it into the 21st Century, it occurred to me that I could use Global Earth to see how the navigation spans line up.

Google Earth, Nov 2011