They say it’s a good idea not to burn your bridges, and I’m inclined to agree. But if you’re going to replace it with a brand-spanking new bridge, then why not?

Another new bridge replaced an older one in the A-1 Mountain Road overpass over I-40 in west Flagstaff. Using innovative construction methods, ADOT was able to demolish and replace the bridge in less than 40 days.

In fact, new bridges have been popping up all over northern Arizona. The A-1 Mountain Road Bridge joins these new bridges that were built in the last few years:

• Rio de Flag Bridge in downtown Flagstaff
• I-40 bridges over Business 40 in west Flagstaff
• Fourth Street Bridge in east Flagstaff
• Meteor City Road Bridges near Meteor Crater
• I-40 Hughes Avenue Bridge to Bellemont

Many of these bridges were replaced using time-saving techniques that cut down on traffic impacts, like precasting bridge elements off-site, the bridge-slide method and geosynthetic reinforced soil-integrated bridge system. 

Have gone a bridge too far?

Just wait as ADOT continues to work on replacing the I-40 bridges at Pineveta Draw near Ash Fork, the I-15 Virgin River Bridge No. 1 in the northwest corner of Arizona and the Lukachukai and Agua Sal North bridges along US 191 in the Navajo community of Round Rock.

ADOT is also rehabilitating bridges along I-40 at Hermosa Drive in Holbrook, Seligman at Exit 123 and Anvil Rock Road 11 miles west of Seligman. 

Check out more bridge content on our website.

It may not look like much from afar ... but the Gillespie Dam bridge is a survivor in one of the most notorious bridge-problem areas in Arizona.

Building on the Gila River has always been a challenge. The floodplain is a very turbulent one, and the Antelope Hill bridge (the original site for a bridge across the river) sustained severe damage time and again from floods. In addition, continual flood damage to the newly-established Ocean-to-Ocean Highway led state officials to reroute the road between Wellton and Arlington (south of the river, through Gila Bend). However, since Arlington was north of the river, a new crossing had to be built.

After a few years of problems and false starts (including a flood that washed away much of the construction equipment and materials), the Gillespie Dam Bridge was opened for traffic in 1927. It remained part of the old U.S. 80 mainline until 1956, when the road was re-aligned. It now functions as a county bridge and is part of Historic U.S. Route 80.

The Gillespie Dam bridge was one of the longest vehicular structures in Arizona when it was originally built; it was also the only steel bridge across the Gila River, and one of two remaining bridges with multi-span vehicular through trusses. The Gila River Flood of 1993 only caused some support piers to settle (because of its design and concrete support piers sunk in bedrock). It's one of the most important examples of early bridge construction in Arizona.

 

 

We are so excited to announce that for the second year in a row, an ADOT project is in line for a national award from America’s Transportation Awards! In the transportation industry, this is a BIG deal! 

The Fourth Street Bridge replacement project in Flagstaff, which won a regional award in the 2021 America’s Transportation Awards competition, has made it to the Top 12 finalists to compete for one of two national awards - the Grand Prize and the People’s Choice Award.

While the Grand Prize is decided by an independent panel of industry experts, the People’s Choice Award is decided by the general public through online voting. Last year, when the Loop 202 South Mountain Freeway made the Top 12, we asked a big, but simple favor from you to go online and vote daily for that project. 

We’re asking the same favor from you this year! Go online and vote for the Fourth Street Bridge project each day from now until Oct. 25! Every vote counts!

Need some reasons why you should cast your vote for the Fourth Street Bridge project? Happy to oblige:

• The Fourth Street Bridge has improved community connectivity in Flagstaff by adding more lanes for vehicles to use and a protected path for pedestrians and cyclists!
• The new bridge helps make it easier for students at nearby Northland Preparatory Academy to get to-and-from school.
• The bridge also connected the Flagstaff Urban Trail System across Interstate 40, allowing trail hikers to continue along uninterrupted.
• The bridge was replaced using the “bridge slide” method, in which crews slide the new bridge into place of the old one using hydraulic jacks. This method cut an estimated two months off of construction time and saved nearly $7 million.

Anyone, anywhere can vote. If you’re a Flagstaff resident who has benefited from the new Fourth Street Bridge, now is the time to show your support through voting! Follow this direct link to vote not just once, but every day, for the Fourth Street Bridge through Oct. 25.

As an added bonus, the winning project gets a $10,000 cash prize donated to the charity of the state DOT’s choice. So voting not only gives this well-deserving project national kudos, but it will help benefit a local charity as well!

So do us a solid and set a reminder on your smartphone to vote daily for the Fourth Street Bridge project and give Arizona a chance to shine in the transportation world! 

Looking at State Route 264 on a map, it appears as a jagged east-west line in the northeast corner of Arizona.

But appearances can be deceiving. SR 264 is a vital connecting corridor for the Hopi Tribe and other area motorists, much like State Route 51, Loop 101 and Interstate 17 are for Phoenix area commuters.

Winding from US 160 near Tuba City, the state highway links together all 12 Hopi villages and continues on past Steamboat and Ganado and other destinations. The 154-mile Arizona portion ends at the New Mexico state line near Window Rock, where it continues east as NM 264.

This is why the Arizona Department of Transportation rehabilitation of the Dinnebito Wash Bridge on SR 264 near Hotevilla-Bacavi, milepost 363, is so important.  

The deck replacement project, which is nearing completion, is located west of Third Mesa, one of three mesas on the Hopi Reservation that are comprised of the 12 Hopi villages.

Despite it's importance to SR 264 travelers, by bridge standards, this bridge is short at only 212 feet long, said Mokarr

om Hye, Senior Bridge Engineer with the ADOT Bridge Group.

“The main work is replacing the bridge deck,” Hye said. “We demolished it completely. We are increasing the deck thickness.”  

Originally constructed in 1955, the steel girder bridge allows travelers to cross the Dinnebito Wash about three miles west of Hotevilla-Bacavi Village and 40 miles east of Tuba City.

“It is in a remote area, which makes it challenging,” Hye said. “It is really in the middle of nowhere.”

There’s no quick and easy way to get to milepost 363 on SR 264 from central Phoenix. It’s a 276-mile journey starting with Interstate 17 northbound to Flagstaff, Interstate 40 eastbound to Winslow, State Route 87 northbound to the town of Second Mesa and then heading west on SR 264, past Hotevilla-Bacavi to the destination.

Crews are in the second phase of the project. They’ve poured concrete on one half the bridge and are working on the other half.

Since the rehabilitation started in May, SR 264 has been reduced to one lane of alternating travel on the bridge from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, including weekends.

“In terms of schedule, we are on schedule,” Hye said. “The roadway is scheduled to reopen this fall.”

In another chapter of “while you were sleeping,” we tell the story of the overnight work that recently went into creating the concrete deck for the northbound side of the Interstate 17 bridge that’s under construction above Central Avenue in Phoenix.

For ADOT, the I-17 bridge over Central Avenue had reached the end of its service life. Makes sense, since it originally opened to traffic back in 1962.  Over the past year the old bridge has been demolished in phases and a new bridge has taken shape south of the downtown area.

One of the last major moves was the concrete pour for the new northbound bridge deck. It takes a number of loads of concrete shipped via trucks. And as you can see in this ADOT I-17/Central Ave Bridge Video, an extended boom pump system delivered the concrete from street level on Central Avenue up to the bridge deck. It reminds me of a series of fire hoses that pump concrete instead of water.

Crew members then poured the concrete into the network of steel rebar that provides strength for the bridge deck. Specialized equipment, including a Bidwell pavement roller, is then used to spread and smooth the concrete pavement that drivers will be traveling on within a matter of months.

For this particular operation, 545 cubic yards of concrete were poured for this span in just a matter of hours.

So let’s review the project’s advances since work started in May 2020. Project phases included demolishing and reconstructing the southbound side of the steel-girder bridge. I-17 traffic, which had temporarily been sharing the old northbound side of the bridge, was then shifted to the new southbound span earlier this year. In turn, that allowed the same type of demolition and reconstruction work to take place for the new northbound side of the bridge.

Now it’s on to the last stages of work to finish the entire bridge so I-17 traffic can once again travel through the area with three lanes in each direction. The new structure will be wider to accommodate regional plans for additional lanes along I-17 when future funding is available. Increased clearance below along Central Avenue will provide more room for commercial trucks as well as Valley Metro’s future South Central Avenue light-rail line.

The $13.5 million project has been funded in part by Proposition 400, a dedicated sales tax approved by Maricopa County voters in 2004.

Pop quiz: Can you name the longest historical bridge over Arizona's Gila River?

Give up?

It was the relatively unassuming Bylas Bridge on US Highway 70 in Graham County, near the community of the same name. It was 1,800 feet long and a culmination of many attempts to span the river.

The Gila River has been an issue for Arizona's bridge builders for a long time. It could go from a mere trickle to a huge flood – and back – in the same day. More money and time were spent building and maintaining bridges over this waterway than any other in Arizona. Among them were the Antelope Hill, McPhaul and the Gillespie bridges. Engineers were determined not to let the river's unpredictable nature hold them back.

The Bylas Bridge was designed in 1956 by the Arizona Highway Department. It consists of 23 equal-length spans, with the I-beam steel stringer superstructure carried by concrete abutments and bullnosed piers. Each span extended 80 feet, for a total length of 1,829 feet. The concrete substructure - the bit under the actual driving surface - rested on steel piles driven beneath the riverbed. The concrete deck was 35 feet wide and flanked on both sides by aluminum baluster guardrails with concrete bulkheads. Construction was completed in 1957.

After its completion, the Bylas Bridge carried mainline traffic on US 70 for decades essentially unchanged. In the 1980s, bank and pier-scour protection was done. In 2000 the bridge received minor repairs to the steelwork. 

Unfortunately, by the early 2010s it had become "functionally obsolete."  Simply put, the bridge was just too narrow and in no condition to support modern traffic needs. So in 2012, ADOT began a replacement project, which built a new bridge alongside the historical structure. The old bridge was then demolished in 2013. 

Though it's now long gone, and it didn't have the aesthetic touches of some other bridges, the original Bylas Bridge played an important role in getting traffic across the troublesome Gila River. Add in its trememdous length and you have a structure that's definitely worth remembering. 

Angeline Hoagland would be amazed.

After all, she was but a toddler when she died near the Old Black Canyon Highway in 1889. But stories of her death – and reports of her “ghost” – are alive and kicking today.

Perhaps that’s because travelers can see her lonely grave from the Old Black Canyon Highway as they cross Lynx Creek east of Prescott.

Maybe it’s because Arizona poet laureate and territorial historian, Sharlot Hall (1870-1943), wrote a poem dedicated to the little girl.

Or it could be that Angeline’s death, at the tender age of 2, deeply touched the gold miners, settlers and cowboys of the time, and the tale spread and became part of local lore. 

The story begins in the mid-1880s, long before the old Lynx Creek Bridge was erected in 1922. David Hoagland and his wife, Catherine Stewart Magee Hoagland, left their Texas roots and put down stakes on the banks of Lynx Creek, perhaps drawn like many by the discovery of gold in the creek.

Their daughter, Angeline, was born in 1886, and passed away on Jan. 15, 1889 2 years, 3 months and 15 days later, according to her headstone.

She was buried not in a cemetery, but along the creek near Old Black Canyon Highway. We recently published a blog about this historic stretch of highway.

The cause of the little girl’s death is in dispute. Was she killed by a bobcat or coyote? Did she drown in the the creek? Did she freeze during the blizzard that was blowing at the time?

Prevailing wisdom says she died of illness.

"The cause of death has been the subject of speculation and folklore, although the family’s descendants say she took ill and died, as many children did during this difficult era," the Sharlot Hall Museum of Prescott says on its website.

It was much later that a headstone, engraved with Hall’s poem, was placed on her grave. The poem is at the base and reads:

Here lies our baby Angeline
For which we weep and do repine.
She was all our joy and all our pride
Until the day our baby died.
We hope in heaven again to meet
And then our joy will be complete.
But until our Maker calls us there
We trust her to His righteous care.

Over the 132 years since Angeline died, reports have circulated that her restless spirit still wanders the banks of Lynx Creek. More than one passerby has claimed to have seen her eerie, luminescent presence by the grave.

According to Alan Brown, author of “Haunted Southwest,” some witnesses have reported seeing the spectral figure of a small child standing on the grave. Others say the ground will shake if anyone dares stand inside the iron fence around the grave. College students are said to have camped out by the grave in hopes of catching a glimpse of the supernatural spectre.

But there is an explanation, and it's based on science, according to Brown. The stone from which Angeline's tombstone was carved is of a luminous variety, that when stuck by car headlights, glows brightly.

Unfortunately, the tombstone and poetic epitaph became a target of vandals. The Sharlot Hall Museum of Prescott removed it at some point and stored it for safekeeping before replacing it on Jan. 15, 1993 – exactly 104 years after Angeline died.

Remains of other Hoagland family members are buried in the Citizen’s Cemetery on Sheldon Street in Prescott. It is largely accepted today that the ghost stories probably originated because Angeline’s tombstone is made from a luminous rock. Therefore, if your car headlights hit the rock, it glows brightly! Unfortunately, the tombstone and poetic epitaph became a target of vandals. The Sharlot Hall Museum of Prescott removed it and stored it for safekeeping before replacing it on Jan. 15, 1993 -- exactly 104 years after Angeline died. Remains of other Hoagland family members are buried in the Citizen’s Cemetery on Sheldon Street in Prescott. The Prescott Valley Historical Society adopted the gravesite. Angeline’s lone grave is now surrounded by a black iron fence – the one that some say rattles if you get too close. Prescott Valley Historical Society adopted the gravesite.

Angeline’s lone grave is now surrounded by a black iron fence – the one that some say rattles if you get too close.

A bridge is often an awesome sight to behold: Thick pillars, massive abutments, maybe lots of shiny steel tubing soaring into the sky above a canyon. Or, it could be as simple as a concrete structure crossing a small wash (like the Lowell Arch Bridge near Bisbee).

You may have wondered, if you've passed by or driven on one recently: How did this thing get designed and built?

Wonder no more: Bill Downes, an ADOT design engineer, is here to help explain the process. He says a bridge design engineer must consider three very important points:

1. Geometry: "How long does the bridge need to be, what does it go over and how high is it," said Downes. "The bridge must be high enough to allow traffic or flood water to pass under it."
2. The number of spans: "Essentially how many piers will be needed. Where can piers be placed is also a major factor in this decision. You cannot place piers in a roadway. Where is the roadway below the bridge, and where will it be in the future?"
3. Traffic: "This is not much of a problem on a new bridge on a new roadway, but it is very important on a bridge replacement. Can the new bridge be built next to the existing bridge and the roadway moved over? Can the road be closed/detoured during construction? Often traffic must continue even while trying to build a new bridge."

In addition to all of these, Downes says, the engineer must also take into account utilities near the proposed site; how and where construction crews will access the site and store their equipment; and whether accelerated bridge construction (ABC) methods can be used.

"Although ABC reduces traffic disruptions, they generally cost more and require special planning," he says.

The topography and soil of the proposed bridge site are also important.

"What type of soil is in the area, and what types of foundations can hold up the bridge. Can shallow foundations like a spread footing be used, or are deep foundations such as drilled shafts required?"

Then comes the review.

"As each item is looked at, it may change the choices made earlier," says Downes. "For example, the ability to ship girders to the worksite may change how many piers you will need to have."

After all the data gathering and review, it's time to start designing!

"This is the point where we start the math to determine how strong each bridge element needs to be," he says.

Although no one can predict future traffic patterns, engineers must allow for that, too.

"Bridges historically were designed to last 50 years," he says. "Generally we now design for a 75-year life and many will be expected to continue to carry traffic for over 100 years with only little maintenance or rehabilitation." 

Once the design is completed and approved, Downes says, plans must be made for contractors; and once a contractor is chosen, the bridge design engineer will need to work with the contractor throughout the construction process.

The most important point of all?

"Although bridges are beautiful things they don’t exist in isolation," Downes says. "Building a bridge cannot be accomplished without a great deal of coordination and work with roadway, geotechnical, traffic, district, right-of-way, utility, environmental, material, drainage and other engineers."