New Colorado River bridge -- Awesome, dude!

[scotpens]

The Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, a short distance downstream from Hoover Dam, is now open to motor and pedestrian traffic.

At 1900 feet long and 900 feet above the river, it's the longest single-span concrete arch bridge in the Western hemisphere and the seventh-highest bridge in the world. It took six years to build.

Good old American know-how can still accomplish some amazing shit.

 

[Tora Ziyal]

Amazing and, from other pictures of it that I've seen, gorgeous.

 

[Mr. B]

I saw the bridge under construction in May driving across the Hoover Dam... very impressive indeed.

 

[RobertVA]

I saw a cable documentary about the earlier stages of construction of that bridge.

Two construction crews were competing over which of the paired support columns (the vertical ones near the ends of the bridge) they could complete first. There were also challenges obtaining enough truckloads of concrete in one night to form the arch foundation in one continuous pour. The daytime heat would have made the concrete clog the delivery pipeline from the canyon rim to the foundation forms.

They even had some cranes collapse during a wind storm. The canyon was too wide for a conventional boom crane. As was used during the dam construction, vertical towers were erected on both sides of the canyon and construction loads were suspended from hoists that moved on cables strung between the tops of the towers.

That documentary was produced and released before the construction crew reached the point of building the center portion of the bridge.

 

[bigdaddy]

My only complaint is the color. It's too grey, they could have added some dye to it.