Dames Point Bridge

The Dames Point Bridge (officially the Napoleon Bonaparte Broward Bridge) is a cable-stayed bridge over the St. Johns River in Jacksonville, Florida on the Interstate 295 East Beltway. Construction began in 1985 and was completed in 1989. The main span is 1,300 feet (396.2 m), and is 175 feet (53.3 m) high. The bridge was designed by HNTB Corporation and RS&H, Inc. The Massman Construction Company built the bridge.

Design

The bridge's cables are arranged on multiple vertical planes in a slight modification to the harp (parallel) stay arrangement. Main span cables are paired to anchor into the tower in a vertical plane while side span cables pair up to anchor in a horizontal plane such that four cables anchor in each tower at approximately the same elevation.

Superlatives

Until the 2003 completion of the Sidney Lanier Bridge in Brunswick, Georgia the Dames Point Bridge was the only bridge in the United States to feature the harp stay arrangement.

It remains one of the largest cable-stayed bridges in the United States, with 21 miles (34 km) of cable.

Accident

On May 15, 1989, while inspectors were checking the bridge for cracks and fissures, the boom arm holding a bucket snapped, leaving the bucket tilted on its side and the workers at risk of plummeting hundreds of feet to the river below. Rescuers rappelled down the side of the bridge to the workers and successfully brought all of them to safety. The story of this rescue effort was aired on Rescue 911 on September 12 of the same year.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Dames Point Bridge" and modified on 22 July 2019 under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.