The Saint Cloud Metro Area's Main Bridge, Granite City Crossing on Hwy 23 is Brand New!
In the Saint Cloud Metro area we have 5 bridges, for local traffic, crossing the Mississippi River. There is a 6th bridge in Sartell and a seventh in Rice and one in Clearwater on Hwy 24. The main bridges that are used to get from one part of St. Cloud to the other are the Hwy 15 bridge, the new Sauk Rapids Bridge, The Saint Germain St. Bridge, the Granite City Crossing Bridge and the University Drive Bridge.
The Sauk Rapids Regional Bridge and the Granite Crossing Bridge are both brand new. The University Drive Bridge was built in 1985, The Hwy 15 bridge, the Bridge of Hope, was built in 1995, the Saint Germain Street Bridge, Veterans Bridge, was built in 1971. There is also the St. Cloud Rail Bridge, crossing the Mississippi along the BNSF railway.
The Hwy 23 Bridge is still sometimes referred to in St. Cloud as the Desoto Bridge, but the Desoto is gone and the Granite City Crossing is now the Hwy 23 bridge. The Desoto, trussed deck-arch bridge was built in 1958. In 2008 the bridge was inspected and found to have 4 bent gusset plates, the cause of the horrible bridge collapse on I35 in the twin Cities. Lesson learned, the Desoto was closed and plans were begun to figure out building a new safe bridge in its place. Saint Cloud's new bridge, Granite City Crossing was slated to open in June of 2010, but they were able to get the project completed and had a celebratory crossing on October 29, 2009.
The Granite City Crossing Bridge is a steel plate bridge, similar in design and construction to the 35E Lexington Bridge. By the way, while researching the exact dates of the construction of our Saint Cloud Metro area bridges I found a really interesting website all about bridges that has a lot more info and pictures. The bridge was completed in 18 months and while it was interesting having all of the traffic diverted over to the Veterans and the University Bridges while it was being constructed we are very thankful that the bent gusset plates were caught and that we now have a new safe bridge, Granite City Crossing, to cross the Mississippi.
Comments(3)