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Saginaw River Bridge

Saginaw County, Michigan

Photos 

Sixth Street Bridge over the Saginaw River

unknown year taken

taken from Michigan State Historic Preservation Office, Flickr

License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND)

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View this photo at flic.kr

BH Photo #324829

Map 

Facts 

Overview
Swing bridge over Saginaw River on Sixth Street in Saginaw
Location
Saginaw, Saginaw County, Michigan
Status
Removed but not replaced
History
Built 1886 at Genesee Avenue; relocated to Sixth Street in 1904; rehabilitated 1941; removed early 2000s?
Builder
- Smith Bridge Co. of Toledo, Ohio
Design
Swing
Dimensions
Length of largest span: 193.9 ft.
Total length: 571.9 ft.
Deck width: 17.7 ft.
Vertical clearance above deck: 16.3 ft.
Approximate latitude, longitude
+43.45444, -83.92744   (decimal degrees)
43°27'16" N, 83°55'39" W   (degrees°minutes'seconds")
Approximate UTM coordinates
17/263149/4815445 (zone/easting/northing)
Quadrangle map:
Saginaw
Inventory numbers
MINBI 734595200413B01 (Michigan bridge number on the National Bridge Inventory 2010 and before)
BH 20215 (Bridgehunter.com ID)

Categories 

19th Century (7,622)
Built 1886 (196)
Built during 1880s (2,009)
Lost (24,929)
Lost during 2000s (4,194)
Michigan (1,135)
Movable (2,984)
Owned by city (5,454)
Pratt through truss (5,421)
 Pratt truss (9,341)
Saginaw County, Michigan (38)
Saginaw, Michigan (10)
Smith Bridge Co. (86)
Span length 175-250 feet (1,991)
Swing (1,461)
Through truss (15,155)
Total length 500-1000 feet (2,876)
Truss (32,928)

Update Log 

  • May 20, 2015: New photo from Douglas Butler
  • May 19, 2015: New photo from Elliott Johnson
  • May 18, 2015: Updated by Nathan Holth: Added likely builder.
  • May 18, 2015: Updated by Elliott Johnson: fixed coordinates

Related Bridges 

Sources 

  • Elliott Johnson - elliottsgon15 [at] hotmail [dot] com
  • Nathan Holth
  • Douglas Butler
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Comments 

Saginaw River Bridge
Posted December 18, 2019, by Daniel Watters (Drwatters3 [at] gmail [dot] com)

My father used the 6th street bridge regularly to get from the foundry to the bar. The foundry was on the east side of the river. The bar was in Carrollton on the west side.

Saginaw River Bridge
Posted December 9, 2019, by Mike Kerkau (mjkerkau [at] gmail [dot] com)

Nathan:

Hyde's 1976 inventory confirms your theory, this was indeed a Smith Co. bridge. It also offers that this was originally built for Genesee Avenue further downstream, until being moved to Sixth Street in 1904.

Also, Hyde has the exact same photo for this in the inventory; it either dates to that specifically or goes back even farther.

Incidentally, I once visited the north end of the river at this site, and it looks like even the abutments were removed.

Saginaw River Bridge
Posted November 29, 2018, by Luke

But did you catch the aliens at Area 51?

Saginaw River Bridge
Posted November 29, 2018, by Glen Granger (gwgranger1 [at] gmail [dot] com)

When I was a police officer for Saginaw we would use it to quickly get to area 7 from area 1.

Saginaw River Bridge
Posted May 18, 2015, by Nathan Holth (webmaster [at] historicbridges [dot] org)

I am somewhat familiar with Michigan bridge history, and there definitely was a 6th Street Bridge in Saginaw. The likely builder was Smith Bridge Company of Toledo. Similar styled bridge. http://bridgehunter.com/ky/meade/bh43007/

Saginaw River Bridge
Posted May 18, 2015, by Don Morrison

How about this?

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mishpo/3862671496

Saginaw River Bridge
Posted May 18, 2015, by Elliott Johnson (elliottsgon15 [at] hotmail [dot] com)

I can find no proof of this bridges existence, the satellite shows an empty lot and the NRHP has no listing for it. The NBI shows it, but that was the only proof i could find.