Amelia Earhart Bridge

The Amelia Earhart Memorial Bridge is a network tied arch bridge over the Missouri River on U.S. Route 59 between Atchison, Kansas and Buchanan County, Missouri. It opened in December 2012, replacing a previous truss bridge with the same name.

The bridge is decorated with LED lighting which can be programmed to change for various functions. Pictures of the bridge with its arch lights in red, white, blue giving the illusion of a fluttering American flag when reflected in the Missouri River is widely circulated in social media.

Previous bridge

The previous, 2-lane, bridge was built in 1937–1938 by the Works Progress Administration. It was designed by Sverdrup & Parcel. The bridge was originally named the Mo-Kan Free Bridge because it did not charge a toll (the adjacent railroad bridge served as a crossing for rail traffic as well as cars and pedestrians prior to the construction of the free bridge). The bridge was renamed for aviator Amelia Earhart, a native of Atchison, in 1997 to honor the centennial of her birth in Atchison. The illumination along the trusses and xenon spotlights that shine straight up into the sky from the top of the bridge's two peaks were installed and debuted during the Amelia Earhart Centennial Celebration on July 24, 1997.

The bridge was the topic of a preservation debate on whether to replace it with a new four-lane bridge or to keep it and build a second bridge. The old bridge was demolished on October 9, 2013 using linear shaped charges.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Amelia Earhart Memorial Bridge" and modified on July 23, 2019 according to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.