1951,1987-89,2015,2018-20 Martin Luther King Bridge over Mississippi River at St. Louis

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

The original name of this bridge was Veterans Memorial.

HistoricBridges calls the length of the main span, 962', technologically significant. JohnWeeks elaborates that "it was the 6th longest cantilevered truss bridge in the US, and the largest cantilevered truss bridge over the Mississippi River."

Street View

This bridge carried US-40 and US-66 from 1955 until 1967 when the Popular Street Interstate Bridge opened. So US-66 must have moved from the Chain of Rocks Bridge to this bridge in 1955.

Redeker Rail Video & Photography posted
Glad I was able to grab a shot of the Terminal 101 Job detouring over the high line along the Mississippi River through Lacledes Landing in St.Louis on Wednesday. After a long day that started in Humbolt, Tennessee with a failed attempt at the CSX OCS (ran 2 hours early before sunrise) and included TigerTail deliveries to 4 stores in Illinois, I was very pleased to catch a TRRA Job in great afternoon light running the high line due to the final bridge span being replaced on its normal route over the Merchants Bridge. The huge cut of double stacks was interesting to see on this job which I assume were destined for the NS. After the shot had time to grab some Ted Drew’s and make it back to Memphis before midnight, lol. 8/24/2022
Terry Redeker shared
Dennis DeBruler: Thanks for framing this shot with the Martin Luther King Bridge.
 https://www.google.com/.../data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4...

Stupp Brothers Photo via BridgeHunter, License: Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)

Charles A. Ellis was one of the designers of the bridge until he died in 1949. Ellis was effectively the chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge. But Richard B. Strauss, the Chief Engineer of record, stole all of the credit for the design from Ellis. [HistoricBridges, Dennis DeBruler]

Postcard via BridgeHunter
[The Eads Bridge is in the background.]

Every link that I found  that went to St. Louis Post-Dispatch was either broken or behind a paywall. Fortunately, John Weeks explains "The Illinois DOT plans to close the MLK bridge between October 12, 2009, and October 24, 2009, to make safety repairs to the MLK bridge. The narrow lanes and the lack of a divider has lead to 38 serious accidents between 2003 and 2009. The bridge will be reconfigured for 2 lanes heading east into Illinois, and one lane heading west into Saint Louis. Converting the bridge to 3 lanes will allow the lanes to be a bit wider and allow for a center divider to be installed." John also found a traffic count for 2003 of 31,800.

Street View, Oct 2007
[Note that the semi is over the white line!]

Street View, Jun 2012

I was surprised that the 10 street views between 2007 and 2022 showed very light traffic on the bridge. Then it occurred to me that the street view drivers probably avoid the rush hours. Also, the opening of the Stan Musial Bridge in 2014 reduced the daily count from 23,000 to 12,000. [stlpublicradio]

At first, I was surprised that the barrier wasn't movable so that the direction of the 2-lane traffic could be changed between rush hours. I've seen that on other bridges. But when I looked at a satellite map, I realized that the eastbound lanes terminate on an Interstate highway, which can handle the traffic, whereas the westbound lane terminates on downtown streets, which can't handle the traffic.

The main reason the bridge was closed in Aug 2018 was for a $24.3m replacement of the approach bridge on the Illinois side. The bridge was to reopen in fall 2019. It is a shame this this work wasn't coordinated with the $16m repairs of the bridge itself for six months in 2015. [stlpublicradio] Not overlapping the two outages was especially bad because the opening for the Illinois repairs were delayed until summer 2020 because of the Mississippi floods in 2019. [wsiltv] This page describes the 2015 work, and this page described the 2018-20 work.