The Tallest Bridges in the United States

America's tallest bridge went up in six months, cost $350,000, and opened weeks after the 1929 stock market crash. It still wobbles underfoot, on purpose. The Royal Gorge Bridge has hung 955 feet over the Arkansas River ever since, and nothing built in the United States has topped it. Bridge height is measured as the drop from the deck to whatever lies below, water or rock. By that measure, four American bridges clear 700 feet, and each got there for a completely different reason: a tourist stunt, a dam bypass, a mountain shortcut, and a reservoir that never showed up.

Royal Gorge Bridge, Colorado (955 Feet)

The Royal Gorge Bridge was never meant to carry traffic anywhere. Texas businessman Lon Piper saw the gorge in 1928 and decided people would pay to walk across it, so engineer George E. Cole and a crew of about 80 men strung the suspension span between June and November 1929 without a single fatality. The deck, 955 feet above the Arkansas River near Canon City, is made of 1,292 wooden planks that flex and sway under every footstep. The gamble held the title of world's highest bridge for 72 years, until China's Liuguanghe Bridge finally passed it in 2001. It remains a pedestrian attraction inside Royal Gorge Bridge & Park, and it is a survivor: a 2013 wildfire destroyed 90 percent of the surrounding park but cost the bridge only about 100 planks. The structure joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, Arizona/Nevada (890 Feet)

For 75 years, every truck on US Route 93 had to crawl across the crest of Hoover Dam through a knot of hairpin turns, and after September 11, 2001, trucks were banned from the dam entirely and detoured 23 extra miles. The fix opened to traffic on October 19, 2010: a deck 890 feet above the Colorado River, making it the highest road bridge in the country and the highest anywhere on the Interstate system. The Royal Gorge span carries only pedestrians, so this is the tallest bridge in America you can drive. Its 1,060-foot twin-rib arch is the longest concrete arch in the Western Hemisphere, and the bridge was the first concrete-steel composite arch ever built in the United States. The $114 million crossing honors Mike O'Callaghan, Nevada's governor in the 1970s, and Pat Tillman, the NFL safety who left the Arizona Cardinals for the Army Rangers and was killed in Afghanistan in 2004. A walkway lets visitors take in the view of the dam that workers once had from construction high-lines.

New River Gorge Bridge, West Virginia (876 Feet)

Before October 22, 1977, crossing the New River Gorge in Fayette County meant 40 minutes of switchbacks on narrow mountain roads. The New River Gorge Bridge cut that to under a minute. The $37 million span, designed by the Michael Baker Company and erected by US Steel's American Bridge Division, runs 3,030 feet rim to rim on a 1,700-foot steel arch that was the longest in the world from 1977 until Shanghai's Lupu Bridge took the record in 2003. It is built from COR-TEN steel that rusts into its own protective coating, which is why the bridge is brown and why West Virginia never has to paint it. Every third Saturday of October since 1980, the state closes the deck for Bridge Day and hundreds of BASE jumpers parachute 876 feet into the gorge, the only day such jumps are legal here. The bridge earned a spot on the back of West Virginia's 2005 state quarter, and since 2020 it has anchored New River Gorge National Park and Preserve.

Foresthill Bridge, California (730 Feet)

The Foresthill Bridge is tall by accident. When it opened in 1973 connecting Auburn and Foresthill in Placer County, the plan was for the waters of the proposed Auburn Dam reservoir to rise hundreds of feet beneath its deck. The dam was never built, so the 2,428-foot bridge now stands a startling 730 feet above the North Fork American River, the tallest bridge in California, soaring over a canyon it never needed to clear. The $13 million project used steel fabricated by Japan's Kawasaki Heavy Industries and was erected by Willamette Western Contractors, with a roughly $75 million seismic retrofit beginning in 2011. Hollywood noticed the overkill: Vin Diesel drove a Corvette off the deck in the 2002 opening of xXx, parachuting into the canyon below. Pedestrians can walk the span for one of the best canyon views in the Sierra foothills.

The 700-Foot Club: Glen Canyon And Glade Creek

Two more bridges hover right at the 700-foot line. The Glen Canyon Dam Bridge in Page, Arizona, a steel arch completed in 1959, exists because the dam beside it could not have been built without a way to move men and materials across the Colorado River. Its deck sits about 700 feet above the water, close enough to the dam that visitors can watch the structure holding back Lake Powell. In West Virginia, the Phil G. McDonald Bridge carries Interstate 64 roughly 700 feet above Glade Creek, just a short drive from its famous New River Gorge neighbor, and is named for a West Virginia soldier posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in Vietnam.

The 25 Tallest Bridges In The United States

Why America's Tallest Bridges Stand Where They Do

Height in bridge-building is not ambition, it is geography. Every span on this list crosses a gorge or canyon carved deep enough to demand it, which is why the rankings cluster in the canyon country of the West and the river gorges of Appalachia rather than over any famous harbor. The reasons for building vary wildly: the Royal Gorge wanted tourists, Black Canyon needed a security bypass, Fayette County needed a shortcut, and Foresthill got a reservoir that never arrived. For most of the 20th century these were the highest bridges on Earth, but China has rewritten the record book since 2001, and the current world champion, the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge that opened in 2025, hangs more than twice as high as the Royal Gorge deck. America's entries hold a different distinction. People do not just drive these bridges. They walk them, parachute off them, and plan entire trips around them.