The Beaver Bridge in
Beaver, Arkansas
Beaver is a town in Carroll County, Arkansas, United States. As of the 2020 census it had a population of 67. The community is located on the White River at the western limits of Table Rock Lake deep in the Ozark Mountains. Located north of Eure ...
, is a historic one-lane
suspension bridge
A suspension bridge is a type of bridge in which the deck (bridge), deck is hung below suspension wire rope, cables on vertical suspenders. The first modern examples of this type of bridge were built in the early 1800s. Simple suspension bridg ...
carrying
Arkansas Highway 187
Arkansas Highway 187 (AR 187 and Hwy. 187) is a roughly three–quarter loop state highway in Carroll County, Arkansas. The route of runs from Highway 23 to US Highway 62. The highway passes over the Beaver Bridge, a 1943 suspension bridge, ...
over the
White River at
Table Rock Lake. Built in 1949 by the Pioneer Construction Company, the structure is the only suspension bridge open to traffic in Arkansas. The Beaver Bridge was added to the
National Register of Historic Places in 1990.
History
The bridge was bid on December 19, 1947, to Pioneer Construction Company of
Malvern, Arkansas
Malvern is a city in and the county seat of Hot Spring County, Arkansas, United States. Founded as a railroad stop at the eastern edge of the Ouachita Mountains, the community's history and economy have been tied to available agricultural and min ...
. The construction foreman who led the project was M. R. Blair (1914-2014), who later served as lead foreman on numerous bridge and highway projects across Arkansas, Missouri, and Tennessee, and who led the construction of numerous dams, highways and bridges throughout the southwestern United States, including the 1964
Big I interchange of Interstates 25 and 40 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Remarkably, Blair and his team completed the project without the benefit of an industrial crane, using only a pickup-mounted, knuckle-boom type crane.
Since the construction was coincident with the building of
Table Rock Dam
Table may refer to:
* Table (furniture), a piece of furniture with a flat surface and one or more legs
* Table (landform), a flat area of land
* Table (information), a data arrangement with rows and columns
* Table (database), how the table data ...
, completion was delayed until 1949 as the
United States Army Corps of Engineers required the bridge to be raised . Upon completion, the bridge remained a vital link for the citizens of Beaver until its closure for major deck rehabilitation in 1981. Further rehabilitation occurred in 2003. The bridge has a 10-ton weight limit. The bridge was temporarily closed for inspection in October 2018 after two overweight buses crossed it.
See also
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List of bridges documented by the Historic American Engineering Record in Arkansas
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References
External links
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{{National Register of Historic Places
Road bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Arkansas
Historic American Engineering Record in Arkansas
National Register of Historic Places in Carroll County, Arkansas
Transportation in Carroll County, Arkansas
Steel bridges in the United States
Suspension bridges in the United States
White River (Arkansas–Missouri)
1949 establishments in Arkansas
Bridges completed in 1949