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| Photos 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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Old railroad bridge beside I.40 in Arkansas.
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Ambassador Bridge between Detroit, MI and Windsor, Ontario.
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| Delaware Memorial Bridge across the Delaware River, connecting southern New Jersey with northern Delaware. The highway is I.295. > |
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I have driven on many bridges over the Ohio River: on I.70, I.77, US35, US50 and US22 between West Virginia and Ohio; on US23, US60, I.275 and I.71/75 between Ohio and Kentucky; US41, US231, US421 and I.65 between Indiana and Kentucky; on I.24 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 hoop 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 also crossed the Mississippi River numerous times: on I.94, I.90, US20, I.80, I.270, I.70, I.255, I.40/55, US60, US82, I.20, US84 and I.10. The Mississippi also 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 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 search 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 have to have a section built high above the water or have 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. |
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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. |
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