Two {{convert|3+1/2|ft|m|1|abbr=on}} sidewalks"},"height":{"wt":"{{Convert|236|ft|m|1|abbr=on}}"},"load":{"wt":""},"clearance":{"wt":""},"below":{"wt":"{{convert|135|ft|m|1|abbr=on}}"},"traffic":{"wt":""},"begin":{"wt":"1929"},"complete":{"wt":"1931"},"open":{"wt":"November 16, 1931"},"closed":{"wt":"December 30, 2006 (Demolished 2013)"},"toll":{"wt":"1931–1953"},"map_cue":{"wt":""},"map_image":{"wt":""},"map_text":{"wt":""},"map_width":{"wt":""},"coordinates":{"wt":"{{coord|44.560692|N|68.801966|W|scale:50000}}"},"extra":{"wt":"{{Infobox NRHP\n | embed = yes\n | name = Waldo–Hancock Bridge\n | nrhp_type = \n | image =\n | caption =\n | location = {{jct|state=ME|US|1}} and {{jct|state=ME|ME|3}},
[[Verona, Maine]]\n | built = 1931\n | architect = Robinson & Steinman\n | architecture = Suspension\n | added = June 20, 1985\n | delisted = December 18, 2013[http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/listings/20131227.htm NRHP actions list, December 27, 2013]\n | area = {{convert|4|acre|1}}\n | refnum = 85001267{{NRISref|version=2010a}}\n }}"}},"i":0}}]}" id="mwBQ">Bridge in Bucksport, Maine
Waldo–Hancock Bridge | |
---|---|
Coordinates | 44°33′38″N68°48′07″W / 44.560692°N 68.801966°W |
Carries | US 1 and SR 3 |
Crosses | Penobscot River |
Locale | Bucksport, Maine, (Hancock County, Maine) |
Official name | Waldo–Hancock Bridge |
Maintained by | Maine Department of Transportation |
ID number | (Bridge No. 2973) |
Characteristics | |
Design | Suspension bridge |
Total length | 2,040 ft (621.8 m) |
Width | 20 ft (6.1 m) roadway with Two 3+1⁄2 ft (1.1 m) sidewalks |
Height | 236 ft (71.9 m) |
Longest span | 800 ft (243.8 m) |
Clearance below | 135 ft (41.1 m) |
History | |
Construction start | 1929 |
Construction end | 1931 |
Opened | November 16, 1931 |
Closed | December 30, 2006 (Demolished 2013) |
Statistics | |
Toll | 1931–1953 |
Waldo–Hancock Bridge | |
Formerly listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places | |
Location | US 1 and SR 3, Verona, Maine |
Area | 4 acres (1.6 ha) |
Built | 1931 |
Architect | Robinson & Steinman |
Architectural style | Suspension |
NRHP reference No. | 85001267 [1] |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | June 20, 1985 |
Removed from NRHP | December 18, 2013 [2] |
Location | |
The Waldo–Hancock Bridge was the first long-span suspension bridge erected in Maine, as well as the first permanent bridge across the Penobscot River downstream from Bangor. The name comes from connecting Waldo and Hancock counties. The bridge was built in 1931 and retired in 2006, when the new Penobscot Narrows Bridge was opened just a few yards away. Demolition of the structure was completed by 2013.
The bridge was 2,040 feet (621.8 m) long with a clear center span of 800 feet (243.8 m) between towers. It had two 350-foot (106.7 m) side spans and carried a 20-foot (6.1 m) wide roadway with two 3+1⁄2-foot (1.1 m) sidewalks. It used stiffening trusses that are 9 feet (2.7 m) deep. Each of the main catenary cables were 9+5⁄8 inches (24.4 cm) in diameter, and consisted of 37 strands of 37 wires. The deck was 135 feet (41.1 m) above water level to allow passage of large ships. The total cost of the span was less than $850,000 in 1931 dollars (about $12 million in 2010 dollars), significantly under its allocated budget.
David B. Steinman, of Robinson and Steinman, was the designer. The bridge was fabricated by American Bridge Company (superstructure) and Merritt-Chapman & Scott (substructure).
Technologically, the Waldo–Hancock Bridge represented a number of firsts. It was one of the first two bridges in the U.S. (along with the St. Johns Bridge in Portland, Oregon, completed in June 1931) to employ Robinson and Steinman's prestressed twisted wire strand cables, which were first used on the 1929 Grand Mère Suspension Bridge over the Saint-Maurice River in Quebec. The prefabrication and prestressing of the cables decreased the number of field adjustments required, saving considerable time, effort, and money. As an additional experiment in efficiency, the Waldo–Hancock cables were marked prior to construction, ensuring proper setting. This method had never been used before and proved successful in this instance. These innovations, invented and pioneered by Steinman, were a significant step forward for builders of suspension bridges.
The Waldo–Hancock was also the first bridge to make use of the Vierendeel truss in its two towers, giving it an effect that Steinman called "artistic, emphasizing horizontal and vertical lines." This attractive and effective truss design was later used in a number of important bridges, including the Triborough Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge. [3]
The Waldo–Hancock Bridge was noted at the time for its economy of design and construction. It cost far less than had been appropriated by the State Highway Commission, which enabled the construction of a second bridge between Verona Island and Bucksport. When opened in 1931 the bridge collected tolls used to retire the bonds issued to finance its construction. All tolls were lifted twenty-two years later on October 31, 1953, however, when those original construction bonds were paid off. Original tolls ranged from 10¢ for "one or two horse vehicle including driver" to 50¢ for "auto truck or tractor over 26,000 pounds".
As the bridge approached its seventieth anniversary with the end of the century, a series of routine safety inspections made by the Maine Department of Transportation revealed that over those seven decades the structure's two main suspension cables and the many vertical bridge deck stringers had become seriously corroded, thereby deteriorating their ability to support the deck, roadway and the traffic that crossed it. These engineering studies made it clear that the bridge required immediate major rehabilitation and eventual replacement. [4]
Work was undertaken to rehabilitate the bridge starting in 2000 [5] by Cianbro and Piasecki Steel Construction Corp. with cable work by Williamsport Wirerope Works Inc., by focusing on strengthening the cables. The two cables were done separately, one a time. Piasecki Steel Construction Corp. of Castleton, New York, rehabilitated the north cable in 2002. At this point the bridge was discovered to be beyond permanent repair and would have to be abandoned and replaced by a new structure to be built adjacent to the aging bridge. [6] Work then shifted to temporary strengthening. For the south cable, MDOT in August 2003 hired Pittsfield, Maine-based Cianbro Corp. under a $4-million emergency contract.
The rehabilitation used a single wire thickness (2-inch-diameter (5.1 cm) galvanized helical 91-wire strands) to facilitate fabricating and installing the cables more quickly. New concrete anchorages with up to 30-foot-long (9.1 m) anchor rods were built by Cianbro. Crews installed continuous runs of strands on new saddles bolted and welded on new base plates atop cable bents and the main towers. Workers placed two groups of four strands 12 feet (3.7 m) above each main cable to allow for pulls. Each strand weighs 4 tons (3.6 metric tons). A rope pull was walked across, connected to a 7⁄8-inch-diameter (2.2 cm) pull cable, then winched back across and connected to the strand, which was fed through a tensioner holding back about 15,000 pounds (7,000 kg) to smooth the pull.
"We hooked and rehooked one strand per day on average," says Archie J. Wheaton, Cianbro project superintendent. "The strands were connected to anchor rods; then we set the sag." The new auxiliary cables are connected to existing double suspender cables by 1+1⁄8-inch-diameter (2.9 cm) steel rods, then tensioned with 30-ton (27.2 metric ton) jacks, bringing the new cables about 3 feet (1 m) from the main cables. [7]
A new construction, the Penobscot Narrows Bridge, was built alongside the older one. [8] The new bridge was opened to traffic on December 30, 2006, at which point the Waldo–Hancock Bridge was ceremoniously closed. Barricades were erected at both ends, closing the bridge to both cars and pedestrians.
The Maine Department of Transportation announced on February 14, 2012, that the bridge would be demolished starting that summer and be completed by the fall. The schedule was designed to accommodate the needs of two endangered species, the Peregrine falcon and the Shortnose sturgeon. Barges were placed in the Penobscot River onto which sections of the bridge were lowered. The concrete piers in the river are all that remains, and MDOT worked with the United States Coast Guard to design lights for them once the Bridge was removed to aid ships in the river. [9] Later, MaineDOT announced that the low bid of $5.35 million by S&R Corp. of Lowell, Massachusetts, was accepted. [10]
Demolition was delayed until 2012, beginning with the November 20 removal of the bridge's flag poles, and was completed in June 2013. [11]
The following sources are referenced in the HAER documentation: [12]
A suspension bridge is a type of bridge in which the deck is hung below suspension cables on vertical suspenders. The first modern examples of this type of bridge were built in the early 1800s. Simple suspension bridges, which lack vertical suspenders, have a long history in many mountainous parts of the world.
Hancock County is a county located in the U.S. state of Maine. As of the 2020 census, the population was 55,478. Its county seat is Ellsworth. The county was incorporated on June 25, 1789, and named for John Hancock, the first governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Verona Island is a town located on an island of the same name in the Penobscot River in Hancock County, Maine, United States. The population was 507 at the 2020 census.
A cable-stayed bridge has one or more towers, from which cables support the bridge deck. A distinctive feature are the cables or stays, which run directly from the tower to the deck, normally forming a fan-like pattern or a series of parallel lines. This is in contrast to the modern suspension bridge, where the cables supporting the deck are suspended vertically from the main cable, anchored at both ends of the bridge and running between the towers. The cable-stayed bridge is optimal for spans longer than cantilever bridges and shorter than suspension bridges. This is the range within which cantilever bridges would rapidly grow heavier, and suspension bridge cabling would be more costly.
The 1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the first bridge at this location, was a suspension bridge in the U.S. state of Washington that spanned the Tacoma Narrows strait of Puget Sound between Tacoma and the Kitsap Peninsula. It opened to traffic on July 1, 1940, and dramatically collapsed into Puget Sound on November 7 of the same year. The bridge's collapse has been described as "spectacular" and in subsequent decades "has attracted the attention of engineers, physicists, and mathematicians". Throughout its short existence, it was the world's third-longest suspension bridge by main span, behind the Golden Gate Bridge and the George Washington Bridge.
The St. Johns Bridge is a steel suspension bridge that spans the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, United States, between the Cathedral Park neighborhood in North Portland and the Linnton and Northwest Industrial neighborhoods in Northwest Portland. It carries the U.S. Route 30 Bypass. It is the only suspension bridge in the Willamette Valley and one of three public highway suspension bridges in Oregon.
The Penobscot River is a 109-mile-long (175 km) river in the U.S. state of Maine. Including the river's West Branch and South Branch increases the Penobscot's length to 264 miles (425 km), making it the second-longest river system in Maine and the longest entirely in the state. Its drainage basin contains 8,610 square miles (22,300 km2).
Fort Knox, now Fort Knox State Park or Fort Knox State Historic Site, is located on the western bank of the Penobscot River in the town of Prospect, Maine, about 5 miles (8.0 km) from the mouth of the river. Built between 1844 and 1869, it was the first fort in Maine built entirely of granite; most previous forts used wood, earth, and stone. It is named after Major General Henry Knox, the first U.S. Secretary of War and Commander of Artillery during the American Revolutionary War, who at the end of his life lived not far away in Thomaston. As a virtually intact example of a mid-19th century granite coastal fortification, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1969 and declared a National Historic Landmark on December 30, 1970. Fort Knox also serves as the entry site for the observation tower of the Penobscot Narrows Bridge that opened to the public in 2007.
David Barnard Steinman was an American civil engineer. He was the designer of the Mackinac Bridge and many other notable bridges, and a published author. He grew up in New York City's lower Manhattan, and lived with the ambition of making his mark on the Brooklyn Bridge that he lived under. In 1906 he earned a bachelor's degree from City College and in 1909, a Master of Arts from Columbia University and a Doctorate in 1911. He also received an honorary Doctor of Science in Engineering on 15 April 1952 from degree mill Sequoia University, but would distance himself from it soon after a 1957 inquiry raised doubts over its legitimacy, and did not mention the qualifications in his biographies. He was awarded the Franklin Institute's Louis E. Levy Medal in 1957.
The Veterans' Glass City Skyway, commonly called the Toledo Skyway Bridge, is a cable-stayed bridge on Interstate 280 in Toledo, Ohio. After many delays, it opened in 2007. The bridge has taken traffic and reduced delays on the Robert Craig Memorial Bridge, a bascule bridge that was, until its transfer to local control, one of the last moveable bridges on the Interstate highway system. The Skyway is Ohio Department of Transportation's (ODOT) biggest single construction project.
The Kingston–Port Ewen Suspension Bridge, sometimes known as the "Rondout Creek bridge", "Old Bridge" or "Wurts Street Bridge", is a steel suspension bridge spanning Rondout Creek, near where it empties into the Hudson River. It connects the City of Kingston to the north, with the village of Port Ewen to the south. Completed in 1921, it was the final link in New York's first north-south highway on the West Shore of the Hudson, and is considered an important engineering accomplishment associated with the development of early motoring.
The U.S. Grant Bridge is the name of the two bridges that carry and have carried traffic on U.S. Route 23 between Portsmouth, Ohio and South Portsmouth, Kentucky across the Ohio River in the United States. The original suspension bridge was closed and demolished in 2001 and the replacement cable-stayed bridge opened on October 16, 2006.
The Deer Isle Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning Eggemoggin Reach in the state of Maine. The bridge is the only vehicular connection from the Maine mainland to Little Deer Isle, one of the segments that make up the island. The span was completed in March 1939 with a main span of 1,088 feet (332 m). The bridge was designed by Holton Duncan Robinson and David Bernard Steinman. It encountered wind stability problems that were similar to those of the Whitestone Bridge and the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which collapsed shortly after it opened. The problems led to modifications which included numerous cable stays connecting cables to the tower and tower to the deck. The span today carries two narrow lanes of State Route 15.
The Sarah Mildred Long Bridge is a lift bridge spanning the Piscataqua River between Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Kittery, Maine, carrying traffic of U.S. Route 1 Bypass. An original bridge by the same name was in operation from 1940 until 2016. A replacement span opened in March 2018.
The Parkersburg–Belpre Bridge is a four-lane cantilever bridge that connects Parkersburg, West Virginia, to Belpre, Ohio, across the Ohio River. The bridge was completed in 1980. The bridge had been signed U.S. Route 50 (US 50) until June 13, 2008, when that highway was re-routed to the Blennerhassett Island Bridge a few miles to the west, as part of the completion of the Corridor D project around Parkersburg. The American Discovery Trail uses the bridge to cross the Ohio River.
The Penobscot Narrows Bridge is a 2,120-foot-long (650 m) cable-stayed bridge that carries US 1/SR 3 over the Penobscot River. It connects Verona Island to Prospect, in the U.S. state of Maine. It opened in December 2006, replacing the Waldo–Hancock Bridge, built in 1931.
Angers Bridge, also called the Basse-Chaîne Bridge, was a suspension bridge over the Maine River in Angers, France. It was designed by Joseph Chaley and Bordillon, and built between 1836 and 1839. The bridge collapsed on 16 April 1850, while a battalion of French soldiers were marching across it, killing over 200.
The 1950 Tacoma Narrows Bridge is a suspension bridge in the U.S. state of Washington that carries the westbound lanes of Washington State Route 16 across the Tacoma Narrows strait, between the city of Tacoma and the Kitsap Peninsula. Opened on October 14, 1950, it was built in the same location as the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which collapsed due to a windstorm on November 7, 1940. It is the older of the twin bridges that make up the Tacoma Narrows Bridge crossing of the Tacoma Narrows, and carried both directions of traffic across the strait until 2007. At the time of its construction, the bridge was, like its predecessor, the third-longest suspension bridge in the world in terms of main span length, behind the Golden Gate Bridge and George Washington Bridge; it is now the 46th longest suspension bridge in the world.
Bucksport is a census-designated place (CDP) in the town of Bucksport in Hancock County, Maine, United States. The population was 2,885 at the 2010 census, down from 2,970 at the 2000 census.
Bucksport is a historical town in Hancock County, Maine, United States. The population was 4,944 at the 2020 census. Bucksport is across the Penobscot River estuary from Fort Knox and the Penobscot Narrows Bridge, which replaced the Waldo–Hancock Bridge.