A Tale of Three Bridges

When I booked our latest camping trip for @mrsbozz and I about six months ago, I didn't realize that bridges were going to play such a prominent part of the trip. As the title suggests, they actually did and lucky for you, we got a few photos to share with you from the trip. Full credit to my wife for the majority of the photos as I was busy trying to keep all four tires on the road during two of our bridge visits.

It might not look like much in the photo above, but trust me when I say, the Zilwaukee Bridge is massive. Often referred to as "the Z bridge" by locals, I am going to pull a lot of info from Wikipedia for this post. The bridge carries Interstate 75 across the Saginaw River in Saginaw County, Michigan.

The interstate was completed in this area around 1960, but to get across the Saginaw river travelers had to stop and use a drawbridge. This often caused major back ups heading north and south on I-75 especially during weekends when everyone is heading up north and then back home.

They realized they needed to make a new bridge with a higher span that the freighters could fit under, so in 1979 construction started. I remember as a young kid there were all kinds of rumors and controversies swirling around the Zilwaukee Bridge.

They planned to have it completed in three years, but it ended up taking a full nine years before traffic was able to pass over it and the $79 million dollar budget was blown out of the water by close to double the cost.

In 1982 the bridge was about 2/3 complete and a section weighing 6700 tons wasn't properly counterbalanced and it tipped down five feet out of alignment. As a result, a pier footing was cracked, and another contractor was hired to complete the job. In addition to that, at one point they discovered an uncharted landfill containing PCB chemicals and they had to halt construction while a clean up was done.

I used to know several people who would refuse to drive over the Z Bridge. While the drawbridge was still open they would exit the expressway, go over the drawbridge, and then get back on the expressway to cross the Saginaw River. After they decommissioned the drawbridge, those same people started taking the I-675 bypass through downtown Saginaw to avoid going over the Zilwaukee Bridge.

While we were camping on Saturday, I decided to take us on a drive to the small town of Croswell, MI about fifteen to twenty minutes away from Lakeport State Park where we were staying. Croswell doesn't have too much going on besides a Pioneer Sugar Plant, but they do have this pretty cool swinging pedestrian bridge that crosses the Black River.

The Croswell swinging bridge was constructed in 1905 at an original cost of $105 and it covers a distance of 139 feet. The upper cables were added later at a cost of $150, and in 2006 they replaced all the planks on the bridge at a cost of $1300.

Apparently the cables were provided by the local sugar factory that I mentioned earlier.

Oddly enough, I didn't enjoy this bridge as much as I thought I would. It moved just a little too much for me and as @mrsbozz said, the sides needed to be just a bit higher. I had planned on taking some photos in the middle of it up and down the river, but honestly, I was too busy holding onto the side for dear life as we walked across it.

It's not a very wide bridge to begin with, so when a group of people started crossing from the other side, I thought we were going to get bounced right off it! Everyone commented that after they made it to one side or the other, they still felt like they were swinging and bouncing even though they were on solid ground.

Finally, back on Friday, @mrsbozz and I took a drive down to Port Huron, Michigan to find a used book store that we had read about, and on our way back, we found ourselves traveling under the Blue Water Bridge. The Blue Water Bridge is a twin span bridge that crosses the St. Clair River and is one of three or so points that connects Michigan to Canada.

"The original span is a cantilever truss bridge with a total length of 6,178 ft (1,883 m) and a main span of 871 ft (265 m). The second, newer span is a continuous bowstring arch bridge with a total length of 6,109 ft (1,862 m) and a main span of 922 ft (281 m)."

It's been a long time since I have been over this bridge and I can't say for certain if I have ever been under it like we were on Friday of last weekend. It was pretty cool to see what it looks like from the bottom up. Unfortunately, there was a lot of traffic and I wasn't able to stop to get some more photos. All I have are what my wife was able to take from the passenger seat of the truck.

I don't know if there is a community on HIVE dedicated to bridges, but maybe there should be one...