Allerton Park Bridge

This bridge has been replaced and is open to traffic.

I visited the bridge in Allerton Park in October of 2011. Despite being scheduled for replacement, you can still access it on the south side (by taking the south entrance road-lined with pine trees). The north approach has been blocked off with a chain-linked fence.

The bridge itself is in extremely poor condition. The rebar from the original construction is visible. You can actually break off very large chunks of concrete with your bare hands! I would say that if left for at least ten more years, there would be a pretty good chance of it collapsing. That is probably why it is going to be replaced.

Bridge is scheduled to be replaced in 2013.

Unfortunately, J.P. and I did not get to visit this particular bridge. We planned a bridgehunt into this part of IL visiting various bridges along the Sangamon River, and I found the Allerton Park Bridge. What I did not know is that the roads leading to the bridge were closed. The north road to the bridge was closed about a mile from the bridge, and so, we decided to go to the south approach to the park. We decided to take some roads that cut through the park but we got lost. There were other bridges that we wanted to see, and for sake of time and daylight, we decided to pass this bridge up for the others. Well, maybe next time we can revisit this bridge and take some pictures.

So did you and J.P. never make it to the bridge? Would have liked to see some more photos of this noteworthy concrete girder than those I found on the Internet.

To quote General McAuliffe, "Nuts"

.......or at least a pair of Boxer briefs!

Here is the statue by the way.

Yeah.......J.P and I went bridgehunting in the area and I wanted to visit this bridge. We decided to cut through Allerton Park but failed miserably in doing so. Instead, we ended up at a dead end road in the park, which, at the end of the road was this huge naked statue of some guy. When I say naked, I mean graphically naked. Anyway, if you are going to take your family on an outing and decide that it is a cool idea to have a family picnic in the park, I would advise you to take some blindfolds with you.