Stillwater Bridge
Video
City of Stillwater Heritage Preservation Commission podcast Stillwater's first bridge across the St. Croix opened in 1876. The lift bridge was completed in 1931, and is one of the three remaining vertical-lift highway bridges built in Minnesota and Wisconsin prior to World War II. This style of lift bridge is commonly known as a Waddell and Harrington vertical lift. The span is raised and lowered by steel cables passing over sheaths at the top of steel towers mounted on the span's piers. Video submitted by City of Stillwater |
Facts
- Overview
- Vertical lift bridge over St. Croix River on MN 36/WI 64 at Stillwater
- Location
- Houlton, Washington County, Minnesota, and St. Croix County, Wisconsin
- Status
- Open to pedestrians only
- Future prospects
- Preserved in place for pedestrians since being bypassed by the St. Croix Crossing in 2017
- History
- Built 1931; rehabilitated 1973, 2017
- Builder
- - Ash, Howard, Needles, & Tammen of Kansas City, Missouri (Consulting Engineers)
- Design
- Vertical lift
5 east spans and 1 vertical lift span riveted Camelback through truss
West span: Riveted Parker through truss bridge
Each portal bracing has a 5-rhombus Lattice design - Dimensions
-
Length of largest span: 143.7 ft.
Total length: 1,053.2 ft.
Deck width: 23.0 ft.
Vertical clearance above deck: 13.2 ft.
- Recognition
- Posted to the National Register of Historic Places on May 25, 1989
- Approximate latitude, longitude
- +45.05736, -92.80031 (decimal degrees)
45°03'26" N, 92°48'01" W (degrees°minutes'seconds") - Approximate UTM coordinates
- 15/515723/4989341 (zone/easting/northing)
- Quadrangle map:
- Stillwater
- Average daily traffic (as of 2004)
- 18,000
- Inventory numbers
- MN 4654 (Minnesota bridge number)
NRHP 89000445 (National Register of Historic Places reference number)
BH 34761 (Bridgehunter.com ID) - Inspection report (as of July 2016)
- Overall condition: Poor
Superstructure condition rating: Poor (4 out of 9)
Substructure condition rating: Satisfactory (6 out of 9)
Deck condition rating: Good (7 out of 9)
Sufficiency rating: 17.8 (out of 100)
View more at BridgeReports.com
Update Log
- February 22, 2018: Updated by Amanda: Bridge now rehabilitated for pedestrian use
- December 15, 2017: New photo from Douglas Butler
- August 8, 2017: New photo from Luke
- May 4, 2016: New Street View added by Douglas Butler
- December 10, 2015: New Street View added by Douglas Butler
- November 5, 2014: New video added
- March 4, 2014: New Street View added by Luke Harden
- August 28, 2013: New photo from Douglas Butler
- April 7, 2011: Updated by Nathan Holth: Updated NBI
- July 30, 2010: New Street View added by Jason Smith
- June 4, 2010: Updated by Jason Smith: Added detailed information on design type and history
Related Bridges
- St. Croix Crossing (Successor)
Sources
- Robert Elder - robertelder1 [at] gmail [dot] com
- Jason Smith - flensburg [dot] bridgehunter [dot] av [at] googlemail [dot] com
- Nathan Holth
- Douglas Butler
- Luke
Comments
The bridge was closed earlier this month and will reopen as a pedestrian crossing in 2019. The lift span is still operating (don't know why), but the area is nice to have with less traffic.
I took this pic today.
You've got to like any bridge that has a brewery named after it, The brewery features a very nice photo of the bridge, taken from a boat on the river, on its web site: http://liftbridgebrewery.com/
...and the Half Star Bandit strikes again...
Genreally I like the history channel but I knew this show would be a failure, I gave it 5 minutes anyways. When the mayor said that this bridge needed to be replaced because the sufficiency is 32 and when the I-35W bridge collapsed its sufficiency rating was 50. I couldn't stop laughing, there have to be hundreds if not thousands of bridges in his jurisdiction with a rating under 32 which to him means, to him, they going to fall down in the near future.
I thought of a good analogy for his comparison of this bridge and the I-35W bridge. It's like saying my friend died in a freak car accident when he we 32, I have another friend who is 50, this must mean he will die tomorrow.
Yeah, the History program pointed out several flaws of the bridge but failed to ignore the COST of building a new bridge compared to fixing this one.
More crock and yawn from History Channel programming.
Nathan, I saw the Star Tribune article that you reference on your website the day it was published, and they, too, are haters of historic bridges, especially in the wake of the I-35W bridge collapse. The Wild & Scenic Rivers Act is a total crock, and is very similar to the law that brought down the Shanley Road Bridge in Pennsylvania! Even the mayor of Stillwater wants the bridge gone (even though it will spell doom for their tourism industry!)!!
The History Channel is a threat to historic bridges. Despite decent NBI ratings, an upcoming History Channel show will condemn this bridge as on the verge of collapse. I offer a detailed commentary here: http://www.historicbridges.org/info/stillwater.htm
This page's URL is http://bridgehunter.com/mn/washington/stillwater/
The bridge is now open for pedestrian use.
However, it is clear that more work needs to be done to the bridge to restore it to the quality that is advertised on a bulletin board near the bridge... so that’s probably where the 2019 date comes from.
The bridge is currently preserved for pedestrian use as of February 2018.