80-Year-Old Crown Point Bridge Demolished
A link between New York State and Vermont for over 7-decades, the 80-Year-Old Crown Point Bridge, leaping across Lake Champlain, was demolished yesterday. Residents from all over Upstate NY and The Champlain Valley region of VT came to witness this landmark get scrapped – I mean, what the heck else are you gonna do up there?
Erosion and rust found by safety officials closed the bridge back on October 16th. Demolition crews spent a week placing 800 pounds of explosives packed into more than 500 charges to take Crown Point down. Another crew will begin removing bridge debris from the channel, a task that’s expected to be completed by the spring. Plans are already underway for the replacement bridge to be opened in the summer of 2011.
The bridge that came down yesterday was opened on Aug. 26, 1929, with a ceremony attended by then-Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Lake Champlain Bridge was the nation’s first long-span continuous truss bridge for highway traffic, and its steel girder arch design was used on numerous other spans.
The Source: Jalopnik
Leave a Reply