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| Photographs of American Bridges by Trucker Mike-Page 1 |
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| A bridge is a man-made structure designed to allow one to cross troubled waters without getting wet. The earliest, simplest type of bridge was a log that stretched from one stream bank to the other. Since that time, there have been many famous and elaborate bridges built to carry man and his conveyances across bodies of water: London Bridge, the Bridge of Tears, the bridge on the River Quai, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge. A bridge can be ten feet long, made of wooden planks and arching over the little stream behind the family homestead or it can be constructed of tons of concrete, massive steel girders and wire cables three feet in diameter to connect opposite shores of the mouth of a bay. It can be a few feet above the water it is crossing, as on I.10 in Louisiana, where there is just enough space beneath the roadway to allow fishermen in a rowboat to go under. A bridge can also be hundreds of feet above the body of water, high enough for large ships to pass beneath or to jump from one mountainside to another while crossing a tiny stream at the bottom of a ravine. | |||
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Girder Arch Truss Beam |
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Cable-stayed
Rigid Frame Suspension Cantilever | |
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Old truss-type railroad bridge beside I.40 in Arkansas. Question: Name 5 truss-style bridges near where you live. |
Ambassador Bridge between Detroit, MI and Windsor, Ontario. A suspension bridge. | ||
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Delaware Memorial Bridge across the Delaware River, connecting southern New Jersey with northern Delaware. The highway is I.295. Suspension-type. > |
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I have driven on many bridges over the Ohio River: between West Virginia and Ohio; between Ohio and Kentucky; between Indiana and Kentucky; between Illinois and Kentucky. It is a heavily-used river carrying a lot of barge traffic and serving countless industries located along its banks. This is one of the several bridges over the Ohio River between Indiana and Kentucky. |
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This
combination arch-cable stayed bridge is on I.24 over the Tennessee River in western Kentucky.
You can see how the cables stretch from the hoop to the deck of the bridge to support the roadway.
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| I have crossed the Mississippi River numerous times, between Illinois and Iowa, Illinois and Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas, Mississippi and Arkansas, and Mississippi and Louisiana. The Mississippi River carries a lot of barge traffic as well as a number of Riverboats with fake stern wheel paddles. Most, if not all, of the riverboats are floating gambling casinos. The twin spans on the right are going from southern Illinois to Missouri, on I.255, I think. > |  |
| This traditional-style girder truss bridge is on I.10 in Louisiana. I would guess that nearly 100 miles of I.10 is suspended above open water or swampland in Louisiana. A large portion of this does not rate a real bridge - instead, the roadway is propped up by concrete poles sunk into the swamp mud. I liked to look for gators as I drove along these stretches. |
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| This long double span carries US50 from the eastern to the western shores of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. Bridges like this need a section built high above the water or a section that can be raised to allow larger ships to pass under it. |  |
| Throgs Neck
Bridge carries I.295 connecting Long Island to the Bronx as it soars above
the Long Island Sound. This is a suspension bridge with the center
span being held up by steel cables suspended from larger cables which in
turn are supported by the towers.
Question: Name 4 suspension bridges shown on this page. Tell where they are located. |
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| I call this an
"A-Frame" bridge because I don't know what the official name of the style
is. This also uses cables braced by vertical towers to support the
roadway. This bridge is in Alabama, but there is one just like it on
I.295, the loop road around Richmond, VA. (Jim Poserina wrote to tell me
this is called a "cable-stayed" bridge. Thanks, Jim.) The heavy
cables support the centers of girders which go left and right to support
the roadways.
Assignment: Draw a diagram showing how a cable-stayed bridge holds up the roadway. |
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Note: Copy and save any of the photos from this site FREE or purchase larger, printable photographs for a modest fee. Contact me via the e-mail address below. |
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© 2009 Mikie Metric Productions, Williamsport, PA 17701 |
Copy and Paste: truckermike@mikiemetric.net |
