Arizona Ran US 80 Across the Top of a Dam in 1922. In 1993 the Dam Broke and the Highway Did Not

There is a steel bridge in the Arizona desert, sixteen hundred and sixty-two feet long, nine spans, carrying a two lane county road across a river that for most of the year is not there. Beside it, a few hundred feet upstream, is a concrete wall across the same river with a hole in the middle of it a hundred and twenty feet wide. The wall was a dam. The hole is where the river went through it in nineteen ninety-three, and nobody has touched it since. The bridge was built for one reason. So that a transcontinental highway, the road from Savannah to San Diego, could stop driving across the top of the dam. Because for four years that is what it did. IF YOU ARE GOING UP THERE As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Arizona Atlas and Gazetteer (DeLorme) - Old US 80, the Gillespie Dam Bridge and the back road between Arlington and Gila Bend are all on it, and the signal drops out south of the river: https://link.amazon/B083aL63d WHERE IT IS Gillespie Dam Bridge: 33.227261 N, 112.769413 W Old US 80, Maricopa County, Arizona. About 22 miles north of Gila Bend and 20 miles south of Interstate 10, exits 103 or 109 at Buckeye. The bridge is open to traffic and free. There is an interpretive plaza and parking at the north end, with one of the original 1927 roller bearings on display, and a footpath to the river. The breached dam is visible upstream from the bridge deck. The petroglyphs and the remains of the dam construction camp are a short walk west. All of it is on public right of way; the ranch land either side is private. Gila is pronounced HEE-luh. A NOTE ON THE IMAGES The research and the script are mine, from primary records and archives, and the sources are listed below. Where no photograph of a place survives, and for this channel that is often, the images are period material from elsewhere rather than the place itself. SOURCES Arizona Department of Transportation, Arizona Highways, Gillespie Dam Bridge history Historical Marker Database, Gillespie Dam Bridge and Gillespie Dam markers National Register of Historic Places, Gillespie Dam Bridge, 1981 Maricopa County Department of Transportation, Gillespie Dam Bridge rehabilitation project, 2011 to 2012 Arizona Memory Project, Arizona State Library, Gillespie Dam and Bridge photographs Arizona Highway Department annual reports, 1920 to 1927 United States Geological Survey, January 1993 Gila River flood records IF YOU WERE THERE If you crossed the Gillespie Dam Bridge before the county rebuilt it in 2012, if you have family who were pulled across the dam apron before there was a bridge, or if you were anywhere near Arlington or Gila Bend in January 1993 when the river took the dam, I would like to hear it. Comment or write to [email protected]. Old Alignment. Abandoned American roads, railroads and infrastructure. New video every other day. #gillespiedambridge #arizonahistory #ushighway80