Old US 50 Viaduct

Based on old maps, the pavement on this stretch of old US50 is from 1932 or 1933 - parts of US50 (including this one) are shown as gravel roads on the 1932 map but all of it is paved in the 1933 map. It's interesting that this concrete bridge served a gravel road for about ten years.

Here are a couple through-the-windshield pictures of the new bridge:

I got by to see the new bridge and "ugly" is mild. My thought is that this was replaced by or at least with the encouragement of the railroad. The tall chain link railings are almost certainly there to prevent things from being thrown from the roadway to the tracks below. I didn't look under this particular bridge when I was there two years ago but I've seen junk as big as 25" televisions lying under other rail overpasses. Hillbilly fun, I suppose....

This bridge is gone!

It's been replaced with the ugliest bridge I've ever seen - there are chain link fences on top of the jersey barrier style railings.

The very cool pavement continues from the east junction with US50 to county highway A. Between there and the west junction with US50, the original pavement has a layer of asphalt, buy you can still see the curbs peeking out.

The open spandrel arch bridge to the west of this bridge is still there and (bsides a lot of graffiti) looks like it's in pretty good shape.

This is a really cool stretch of old 50. Actually, from KC to St. Louis there are many old alignments of 50 still opened to traffic.

I'll put the non-bridge pictures in a comment.

These roads had drains for the curbs at the low spots. A lot of city streets still use curbs with drains, but there are problems with puddling.

I drove similar stretches of 50 and 63 between KC and Rolla and I don't recall serious drainage problems. Cars could drive these roads OK but the big semis would crowd the center line to avoid the curbs, making driving a lot more challenging.

I miss driving these old roads but I don't miss sharing them with a lot of traffic.

Webmaster's note: The photos that were here have been incorporated into the main site.

Interesting--they don't make them like that anymore--and there's a reason. The curbs don't drain water well. I'm sure that contributes to some accidents too.

Check out the curbs on that highway. I hear those tended to cause accidents as people would bank onto them accidentally, then overcorrect and end up partially in the oncoming lane.