Bay Shore Road Bridge
Photos
Photo taken by C. Hanchey
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)
BH Photo #235159
Facts
- Overview
- Abandoned concrete tee beam bridge over Escanaba River
- Location
- Escanaba, Delta County, Michigan
- Status
- Removed
- History
- Built 1911, Abandoned 1929, Removed 2015
- Design
- Concrete tee beam
- Dimensions
-
Length of largest span: 40.0 ft.
Total length: 840.0 ft.
- Approximate latitude, longitude
- +45.78268, -87.06888 (decimal degrees)
45°46'58" N, 87°04'08" W (degrees°minutes'seconds") - Approximate UTM coordinates
- 16/494645/5069904 (zone/easting/northing)
- Inventory number
- BH 49646 (Bridgehunter.com ID)
Update Log
- March 29, 2016: Updated by Luke: Update via John: Gone
- November 12, 2013: Updated by Luke Harden: Added category "US 41"
- October 9, 2012: New photos from Jann Mayer
- July 14, 2012: Updated by Luke Harden: Re-imported photographs
- November 18, 2011: Updated by Luke Harden: Added photographs and tiny bit of info.
- September 16, 2011: Added by Luke Harden
Sources
- Luke
- Washington Watch - Derelict bridge removal project
- Historicbridges.org - by Nathan Holth
- Jann Mayer - jannmayer [at] gmail [dot] com
Comments
A concrete tee beam isn't a UCEB.
Ahh, ordinary UCEB.....
Looking at the pier remnants in Pic #6--it looks kind of like the face of a troll, right in the middle...weird!
Amen to that comment, brother. It's like once they developed reinforced concrete bridges, nothing else would do - and nobody gave a thought to longevity. We have a similar situation here in Oregon where they built some stunningly beautiful reinforced concrete bridges on Highway 101 - only to discover that the concrete absorbs salt water, the iron reinforcing rods rust and swell, cracking the concrete and dooming the bridges. They've already had to replace the Alsea bay bridge, and they've installed electrolysis devises on other bridges to try to prevent the rust damage - a stop gap measure at best. And now, even if you wanted to replace a concrete bridge with an iron truss bridge, good luck finding a bridge company that still manufactures them. I suspect most of them have gone out of business because everybody was building concrete bridges instead...
I have been on a similar bridge such as this one. I suppose you could say it was the urban explorer in me or the intrepid historian trying to capture something the rest of us forgot. The first time, scary yet somehow exhilarating. The second ... no fear at all. You could be diagnosed with cancer and die within a month. Crap like that happens all the time. You realize life is too short to be getting one's knickers in a knot or wringing your hands endlessly over this, that, or the other. I agree with Gene.
Hey... Bring back Evil Kenevil or the Dukes of Hazzard as I'm sure they would love this one!
Dangerous for what? It is closed, and probably blocked off, so you are at "your own risk" if you attempt to get on it. Are you afraid parts will fall off in the water, perhaps killing some fish? The world is full of dangers, part of life is learning how to stay safe.
This page's URL is http://bridgehunter.com/mi/delta/bh49646/
Especially one that (although a ruin) was when built among the earliest and largest of its kind in the entire state of Michigan. Please refer to my well-researched page here: http://historicbridges.org/bridges/browser/?bridgebrowser=mi...