Bridging the Little Colorado

This great old bridge over the Little Colorado River is gone:

END POST / UPPER CHORD / DIAGONAL CONNECTION DETAIL. VIEW TO SOUTHEAST. - Holbrook Bridge, Spanning Little Colorado River at AZ 77, Holbrook, Navajo County, AZ, Courtesy Library of Congress

END POST / UPPER CHORD / DIAGONAL CONNECTION DETAIL. VIEW TO SOUTHEAST. – Holbrook Bridge, Spanning Little Colorado River at AZ 77, Holbrook, Navajo County, AZ, Courtesy Library of Congress

Built in 1928, it’s been replaced a wider and much more boring bridge. Its story, from the Historic American Engineering Record:

In 1914 the El Paso Bridge and Iron Company erected a two-span steel truss to replace the existing timber structure over the Little Colorado River. The bridge stood until the Lyman Dam broke upstream on April 14, 1915, critically damaging its abutments. Although repairable in 1915, ten years later the Holbrook Bridge was deemed no longer suitable to carry traffic when Arizona Highway Department (AHD) engineers began to survey a portion of the Holbrook – St. Johns Highway (U.S. Highway 70) in November 1925. By July 1926 the AHD bridge department had designed this four-span pony truss with sidewalks cantilevered from the webs. The bridge was substantial, consuming over 372,000 pounds of structural steel and 789 cubic yards of concrete. The agency waited over a year for the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads to approve the design before letting bids for construction of the Holbrook Bridge. On December 12, 1927, the agency contracted with the Levy Construction Company of Denver under Federal Aid Project 78-B. Levy’s crew commenced work in February and by April poured piers 4 and 5. The Holbrook Bridge was completed on September 9th.

Many more pictures from a 1968 survey here.