The Highest Bridges In The United States

We often take bridges for granted, yet these structures combine bold design, careful science, and clever engineering to link places that terrain once kept apart. Some, like the Glen Canyon Dam Bridge, went up solely to enable the construction of another structure. Others, like the Royal Gorge Bridge, were built purely as an attraction. Most bridges exist to shorten the distance between two points, as the New River Gorge Bridge does by replacing a long detour with a quick crossing. Whether truss, arch, or suspension, their open frames put the lines of tension and compression on display. That structural drama only grows as the drop beneath the deck increases, and the following six American bridges all sit hundreds of feet above the water they cross.

Royal Gorge Bridge (955 feet)

America's highest bridge, the Royal Gorge Bridge, stands near Cañon City, Colorado, with a deck that crosses the gorge 955 feet above the Arkansas River. A leading attraction within Royal Gorge Bridge and Park, this pedestrian suspension bridge was built in 1929 at a cost of $350,000, equivalent to more than $5 million today. It held the title of highest bridge in the world from 1929 to 2001, when China's Liuguanghe Bridge surpassed it, and it stayed among the world's ten highest until 2012, though it remains America's highest. The main span between the towers measures 880 feet, the total length is 1,260 feet, the deck is 18 feet wide, and the crossing is planked with 1,292 wooden boards. The bridge barely survived a 2013 wildfire that destroyed 48 of the park's 52 buildings, including the adjacent Incline Railway and aerial tram, yet only about 100 deck planks needed replacing afterward. More than 26 million people have crossed the bridge since it opened in 1929, an average of roughly 350,000 a year.

Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge (890 feet)

The Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge is an arch bridge over the Colorado River about 1,500 feet downstream of the Hoover Dam, linking Arizona and Nevada on US Route 93. In the early 1960s, government officials judged that the existing Route 93 across the Hoover Dam could not handle projected traffic, but planning for a new span did not begin until the late 1990s. Crews completed the bridge in 2010 at a cost of $114 million, and the full bypass opened to vehicle traffic on October 19, 2010. It was the first concrete-steel composite deck arch bridge built in the US, and it incorporates the widest concrete arch in the Western Hemisphere. With a deck 890 feet above the Colorado River, it ranks as the highest road bridge in the US and the highest on the country's Interstate Highway System. The bridge takes its name from Mike O'Callaghan, Governor of Nevada from 1971 to 1979, and Pat Tillman, the football player who left the Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the United States Army. Tillman was killed by friendly fire in 2004.

New River Gorge Bridge (876 feet)

When the New River Gorge Bridge opened in 1977, it turned a 40-minute drive around the deep gorge into a crossing of less than a minute. Its 1,700-foot steel arch was the longest single-span arch in the world for 26 years, and it remains the longest in the Western Hemisphere. The total structure runs 3,030 feet across the gorge, and the deck sits 876 feet above the New River in West Virginia, linking Fayetteville on the north side with Beckley to the south. As part of US Highway 19, the bridge carries no pedestrian or bicycle traffic except on Bridge Day, held on the third Saturday of October. On that day the deck opens to walkers, and a range of activities draws thousands of people, including BASE jumpers who leap from the span. The rest of the year, visitors take in the bridge from overlooks behind the Canyon Rim Visitor Center or from a rocky outcrop along the Long Point Trail.

Auburn-Foresthill Bridge (730 feet)

The Auburn-Foresthill Bridge crosses the North Fork American River near Auburn, California, and its deck at 730 feet is the highest in the state and the fourth highest in the country. It opened in 1973 to replace a river-level crossing that would have been submerged by the planned Auburn Dam, a reservoir project that was never built. The four-lane bridge carries both vehicles and pedestrians and connects Auburn to Foresthill in the Sierra Nevada foothills. The original span cost about $13 million, and a seismic retrofit that ran from January 2011 to 2015 added more than $74 million. At 2,428 feet long, the bridge rests on two slender concrete piers that rise several hundred feet from the canyon floor. Drivers reach it from Interstate 80 near Auburn, and parking sits at both ends for anyone who wants to walk across and take in the river valley.

Glen Canyon Dam Bridge (700 feet)

The Glen Canyon Bridge is a steel arch bridge in Coconino County, Arizona, carrying two lanes of US Route 89 across the Colorado River. Built in 1959 by the US Bureau of Reclamation, it was the highest arch bridge in the world at completion, with a deck 700 feet above the canyon floor. It went up to move materials for the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam, the second-highest concrete-arch dam in the country, which now stands 865 feet upstream. The bridge runs 1,271 feet in total length and looks out over the dam and Lake Powell, its silver steel set against the red rock walls of the canyon.

Phil G. McDonald Bridge (700 feet)

Carrying Interstate 64 in Raleigh County, West Virginia, near Beckley, the Phil G. McDonald Bridge, also known as the Glade Creek Bridge, is the highest truss bridge in the world, with a deck 700 feet above Glade Creek. Completed in 1988, it rests on one of the tallest piers in the country, rising 341 feet between its foundation and the underside of the truss, and runs 2,179 feet in total length with a main span of 784 feet. The bridge honors Phill G. McDonald, a US Army private first class who enlisted from Beckley and received the Medal of Honor, the military's highest decoration, for his actions in the Vietnam War. He was killed at age 26 during a June 1968 firefight near Kontum, in what was then South Vietnam. The McDonald bridge is a near twin of the Auburn-Foresthill Bridge, differing mainly in that it uses a continuous truss rather than a cantilever.

Bridges Built To Reach

Whatever their design, these bridges share one job: they hold heavy loads against gravity, often for decades, through the geometry of triangles and curves. Their purpose is plain enough in connecting two points, but several carry meaning beyond that. The Phil G. McDonald Bridge and the O'Callaghan-Tillman Bridge both take their names from Americans who died in service far from home, standing as memorials as much as crossings. Many of these spans once broke world records for height, and those records have since moved overseas, not out of rivalry but because engineers elsewhere faced their own voids to cross and had the tools to do it. The result is the same everywhere: places once separated by a canyon are now a minute apart.