Email
Print
Share900 feet above the mighty Colorado River, the $240 million bridge at the Hoover Dam slowly takes shape. These pictures tell it all. The bridge will carry a new section of US Route 93 past the bottleneck of the old road which can be seen twisting and winding around and across the dam itself. The bridge is expected to open in November 2010. Once the bypass is completed, the existing roadway across Hoover Dam will be closed to through traffic.
When complete, it will provide a new link between the states of Nevada and Arizona. An estimated 17,000 cars and trucks will cross it every day.
In an incredible feat of engineering, the road will be supported on the two massive concrete arches that jut out of the rock face.
The arches measure more than 1,000 feet across. The arches are made up of 53 individual sections each 24 feet long which were cast on-site and lifted into place using an improvised high-wire crane strung between temporary steel pylons.
While under construction, the structure looked like a traditional suspension bridge. But once the arches were complete, the suspending cables on each side were removed. Extra vertical columns have been installed on top of the arches to carry the road.
During planning and construction the bridge has been known as the Hoover Dam bypass, although the proposed name is the Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, after a former governor of Nevada and a football player from Arizona who left his professional sports career and enlisted in the United States Army shortly after the 9-11 attacks and was killed in Afghanistan.
Hoover Dam was started in 1931 and used enough concrete to build a road from New York to San Francisco. The stretch of water it created, Lake Mead, is 110 miles long and took six years to fill. The original road was opened at the same time as the famous dam in 1936.
Be sure to notice the white band of rock around Lake Mead. It marks the waterline prior to the current drought and development in the Las Vegas area. It is over 100 feet above the current water level.
Your Neighbors
Write a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
No Comment
Be the first to respond!