1963 I-65 John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge over Ohio River at Louisville, KY

(Bridge Hunter; no Historic Bridges; B&T; Satellite)

(Update: RoadTraffic-Technology article)

C Hanchey Flickr, License: Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 

I-65 cantilever through truss bridge over the Ohio River between Louisville, Jefferson County, Kentucky and Jeffersonville, Clark County, Indiana.

 

The bridge was renamed the John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge in 1963. It was built by the Allied Structural Steel Company and received an Award of Merit for Long Span Bridges from the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) as the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Memorial Bridge.

The George Rogers Clark Memorial Bridge is in the background

Street View from Kentucky side

Street View from Indiana side

Street View

David Gulden posted
Yesterday i posted the SALLY POLK with coal barges n bowboat this is how im use to seeing her.
Roger Green: S/B at Louisville, KY. Old Port of Louisville in background. I would say this photo is from the Clark Bridge.
[This post was the motivation of these notes because this bridge is in the background. The Big Four Bridge is beyond this one.]

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Taken from the ramp that goes up to the Big Four Bridge

Kentucky has had trouble painting its Ohio bridges. In this case it took from 1999 to 2008 and cost $60m because bridge inspectors solicitated bribes and paint contractors kept failing. [BridgesTunnels]

1979 CFNR/NWP Brazos Bridge over Napa River near Napa, CA

(Bridge Hunter; no Historic Bridges; 3D Satellite)

CFNR = California Northern Railroad

NWP = Northwestern Pacific Railroad

"Built 1979; Rendered inoperable by copper thieves 2007; Reopened for traffic 2009." [BridgeHunter]

Street View

Douglas Butler posted
Unknown source: CN Brazo's Railroad Lift Bridge crossing the Napa River located in Napa, CA.

Why some notes about yet another lift bridge? Because I came across a rather interesting view of this bridge.

Lale Masalar posted
GP -- 9 TAKES WATER :))
Timothy Boles: This is the Brazos bridge near Napa California on the NWP. This is the 2nd incident on that bridge. This was 2 GP9s that the engineer ran the red and went for a swim. This engineer became known as "the Commodore" this was in the early 80's if I remember correctly.
The first incident was in the 50s and someone took 3 brand new Baldwin AS616s and ran the red signal went swimming, with a 100 car train behind them. That engineer became known as "The Admiral".
BTW all the locomotives from both incidents returned to service I think

Gordon Asmundson commented on Bridge Hunter with four photos and the text: "1983 the Schellville turn goes for a swim." (Gordon also provided a URL, but it no longer works.)

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Dan Sabin posted
SP units attempting to pass through an open Draw Span.  I don't have any other details on this.  Assume it's in the Bay Area of California. Update-Gene Poon photo.

Gene Poon: This is my photo. It is the Brazos bridge over the Napa River. I was on the opposite shore waiting to get a photo of a train going across the bridge. Instead a maintainer drove up, shooed two kids off the bridge, and started it down from its raised position to get the concrete counterweight out of the way of the approaching runaway which had gotten out of Lombard yard. If the engines had hit the counterweight the bridge would probably have been seriously damaged.

Nobody was on the engines. The crew had gone to beans.

I got off a sequence of shots on my Pentax, so I did not see the splashdown directly, only through a viewfinder!

The photos were published in TRAINS, Feb.1984.

The bridge was sold to North Coast Railroad Authority and Golden Gate Bridge District in 1996 and conveyed to Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit... SMART. It is SMART's only link to the rest of the Anerican rail system.

Kendall Nichols: Gene Poon I remember your caption in Trains, "I haven't ever gotten a picture of a train crossing the Brazos Bridge. Still haven't."

Gene Poon: Kendall Nichols Still true....!!

Paul Jevert shared with the comment: "Espee's submarine Fleet ! DIVE-DIVE-DIVE!"

1935 Mississippi Lock and Dam #5 at Whitman, MN

(John A. Weeks III; HAER; Satellite)

USACE-mission
Constructed and placed in operation May 1935. Site underwent major rehabilitation from 1987 through 1998. Dam consists of concrete structure 1,619 feet long with six roller gates and 28 tainter gates. Earth embankment 18,000 feet long.
USACE-content
A lift of 9'

The red line highlights the earthen embankment. The yellow line shows where there is a culvert under the embankment to keep the wetlands wet.

Satellite plus Paint

Building dams in a swamp is challenging. Now that I've studied a few more dams in the upper-Upper Mississippi, I've noticed that the river channel is typically not as well defined as it is in the lower-Upper Mississippi. As shown by the red line above the dam is over three miles long because of the earth embankment. Furthermore, there is another dam, #5A, just a few miles downstream from this one with another long embankment. And it has a lift of only 5.5'.

At the time of construction of Lock and Dam Number 5T the river was about 2 to 2-1/2 miles wide, with the main channel at the foot of the bluff. The river normally maintained a width of 800 feet, widening to 2 miles in flood stages. Prior to construction, the river bottom rose gently from the river to the Wisconsin bluffs and was overgrown with brush and timber. [HAER-data]

Screenshot

Screenshot

Matthew Cooper posted four photos with the comment: "Lock & Dam 5."

I think the American Duchess is upbound and the photos are in reverse order. That is why I reversed them when I copied them. In the last photo, look at all of the speedboats that are coming into the lock to go downbound.

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HAER-grid, Part 1

HAER-grid, Part 2

1926-1991 8th Street Toll Bridge over Ohio River at Bellaire-Benwood

(Bridge Hunter; Historic Bridges; see below for satellite)

"Operated as a privately owned toll bridge until 1991 when Ohio DOT cut off the west approach to build a new OH 7. Now owned by KDC investments which is in litigation with three companies who claim they paid for the exclusive scrap rights." [BridgeHunterIndex]

I learned of this cantilever bridge from this photo that I found while researching a steel mill in Benwood, WV.

When the free Moundsville Bridge opened in 1986, this toll bridge lost half of its traffic.

C Hanchey Flickr via Bridge Hunter, License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)

"The bridge was historically and technologically significant as the second oldest highway bridge on the Ohio River that spanned the entire Ohio River, and also for being among the oldest surviving highway cantilever spans in the United States. It was also distinguished as one of the oldest and most unaltered highway cantilever spans in the United States." It has a historic rating of 10/10. The rust is just superficial because salt was never used on the bridge by the toll road owners. Only the concrete deck is falling apart. [HistoricBridges]  So replace the concrete with plastic planking that looks like wood and open it as a trail bridge. The viaduct over Benwood can be torn down and replaced with the type of spiral ramps used for the Big Four Bridge at Louisville so that Benwood quits complaining about the bridge. Building those ramps would probably cost less than the demolition.

Boston Public Library Flickr via Bridge Hunter, License: Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)

I'm saving the satellite image since companies are fighting for the right to scrap this bridge. Since this bridge is made with steel that was probably made from iron ore, as opposed to just scrap steel, it probably would fetch premium scrap steel prices. The bridge still stands in a Mar 2021 Google Earth image. One of the legal issues that has delayed the destruction of the bridge is that the Coast Guard is investigating whether or not Ohio state promised the bridge owner that they would build new ramps for the bridge. Historic Bridges reports that they did use taxpayer money to design new ramps.

Satellite

This view was taken from the OH-7 road whose construction destroyed the approaches to the bridge on the Ohio side.

Street View, note the WLE/B&O Bridge peaking through underneath the truss

edgar jusionis, May 2021

1977 I-275 Carroll Lee Cropper Bridge over Ohio River west of Cincinnati, OH

(Bridge Hunter; Satellite, on the north side it is in Indiana instead of Ohio)

Shawn Fox posted, cropped
Max Wolf: I 275 bridge Carroll C Copper mm492 on the OHR
Don Sanders: Just upstream of this bridge is the exact middle point of the Ohio River, Mile 490.5.
Dennis DeBruler: These photos of bridges is a great exercise. This bridge is in a wilderness, and I could not find any decent landside photos.

Roadtrippers

Bridges & Tunnels posted four photos with the comment:

Planning for a circumferential highway around Cincinnati shaped the development of several major Ohio River crossings, including the Carroll Lee Cropper Bridge and the Combs-Hehl Bridges.

🔗 Read on: https://bridgestunnels.com/.../completing-the-circle.../

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The Indianapolis News: April 22 1973 via Bridge Hunter

1913 B&SV/C&NW Bass Point High Bridge near Boone, IA

(Bridge Hunter; no Historic Bridges; Satellite)

I was going to skip yet another steel tower trestle. But when I saw that the public can ride on this trestle, I decided it was worth noting.

The 1913 bridge is 156' high. The steam locomotive that they run was the last one commercially produced. It was built in China for $350,000. [Readers Digest, Nov 2021, p45]

 

Iowa Road Trip posted

Rail Explorers crossing Bass Point Creek High Bridge in Boone, Iowa 

Brian Abeling / Iowa Road Trip

Adam Bonnell: I’ve worked for Rail Explorers for 2 years and i can tell you going out on the tracks hundreds of times never gets old!

Chris Ciesla posted six photos with the comment:

Bass Point High Bridge sit NW of Boone, Iowa and was originally built by the Fort Dodge, Des Moines & Southern, an electric interurban that ran from Des Moines to Fort Dodge and Rockwell City, Iowa.
It's still possible to ride over this bridge on the Boone & Scenic Valley RR who purchased the ;one from the C&NW in the 1960s to continue operate this section of the RR.

Dave Amo: Greatest trestle in the state.

[I wonder why Dave thinks this one is greater than the Kate Shelley Trestle just a mile or so southwest from here.]

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[This trestle is an example of the design that saves steel by using deeper girders between the towers than over the top of the towers.]

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A topo map shows that the Des Moines River has carved a bit of a canyon in this part of Iowa. Thus the tributaries such as Bass Point Creek also have a canyon. On this 1965 map, the railroad is still labeled Fort Dodge, Des Moines & Southern. So the C&NW was reluctant to purchase an interurban.

1965 Boone West Quadrangle @ 1:24,000

This extract of the topo map has the Kate Shelly High Bridge in the lower-left corner and the Bass Point High Bridge in the upper-right corner.

1965 Boone West Quadrangle @ 1:24,000

2 of 5 photos Marty Bernard posted posted with the comment: "5 of the Boone & Scenic Valley RR and the Bass Point High Bridge. Captions with photos"

Marty Bernard sharedshared

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4. Boone & Scenic Valley RR, Bass Point High Bridge, Boone, IA May 19, 1984. Unknown photographer, Iowa Chapter NRHS collection

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5. Boone & Scenic Valley RR, Bass Point High Bridge, Boone, IA Oct. 27, 1984. Unknown photographer, Iowa Chapter NRHS collection

1938 Mississippi Lock and Dam #3 Near Red Wing, MN (Welch, MN)

(John A. Weeks III; Satellite) Red Wing is the nearest town, but most references use Welch, MN.

USACE
Dam is 365' long with 4 roller gates. More than 2,000 feet of earth embankment with a series of upstream spot dikes completes the structure to create Pool 3.
Constructed and placed in operation July 1938. Site underwent major rehabilitation from 1988 through 1991.

The structure is somewhat unique in that the dam itself is not very long, while the river itself is rather wide. The bulk of the structure consists of earth embankments and dikes. The main dam structure consists of 4 roller gates. The lock structure is the standard size for the upper Mississippi of 110 feet wide by 600 feet long.  [JohnWeeks]

USACE-history
The lift is 8'.

John Weeks

USACE-flow

USACE-media

The highlighted curve in the bank upstream of the lock created an outdraft current that shoved downbound tows away from the lock and towards the gated structure. This has caused many accidents, including 11 incidents since 1968 when tows collided with the gated part of the dam. "Navigation accidents can render the four roller gates inoperable, resulting in overtopping and erosion of the embakments. Failure of the embankment system could result in an accidental drawdown of Pool 3 with significant economic and environmental consequences. [USACE-history]

Google Earth, Sep 2009

Using 2009 Tiger funds, an 862' guide wall extension was completed in Apr 2011.

Google Earth, Aug 2011

And a closure dike was completed in Oct 2011. Other improvements such as dredging the channel, improving embankments with sheet pile and riprap, and restoring 313 acres of floodplain were also done.

Google Earth, Sep 2012

The estimate for this 21st Century work was $70m. Until this work was done, USACE rated this structure as the second most likely Corps structure to fail. If it did fail, navigation above Red Wing, MN, would not be possible and the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant would have to be shut down because its water intakes would be above the water level of a drained pool #3. That plant supplies half of the electricity to the twin cities area. [JohnWeeks]

USGS

The post that motivated researching this dam.

Brian Klawitter commented on a post
L&D 3 in 1999....seems like they're thinning out a bit.
[Judging from the context, they are dealing with dead mayflies. This gives us a unique perspective of roller gates that are all the way up.]