The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, also known as the Memphis–Arkansas Bridge or inaccurately as the Memphis–Arkansas Memorial Bridge, is a

cantilevered A cantilever is a rigid structural element that extends horizontally and is supported at only one end. Typically it extends from a flat vertical surface such as a wall, to which it must be firmly attached. Like other structural elements, a cant ...

through

truss bridge A truss bridge is a bridge whose load-bearing superstructure is composed of a truss, a structure of connected elements, usually forming triangular units. The connected elements (typically straight) may be stressed from tension, compression, or ...

carrying

Interstate 55 Interstate 55 (I-55) is a major Interstate Highway in the central United States. As with most primary Interstates that end in a five, it is a major cross-country, north–south route, connecting the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes. The h ...

across the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it fl ...

between

West Memphis, Arkansas West Memphis is the largest city in Crittenden County, Arkansas, United States. The population was 26,245 at the 2010 census, ranking it as the state's 18th largest city, behind Bella Vista. It is part of the Memphis metropolitan area, and is ...

and

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...

. Memphians refer to this bridge as the "Old Bridge" to distinguish it from the "New Bridge", or

Hernando de Soto Bridge The Hernando de Soto Bridge is a tied-arch bridge carrying Interstate 40 across the Mississippi River between West Memphis, Arkansas, and Memphis, Tennessee. The design is a continuous cantilevered cable-stayed steel through arch, with beds ...

, upstream. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge also carries

U.S. Route 61 U.S. Route 61 or U.S. Highway 61 (U.S. 61) is a major United States highway that extends between New Orleans, Louisiana and the city of Wyoming, Minnesota. The highway generally follows the course of the Mississippi River and is designate ...

(US 61), US 64, US 70 and US 79 from Memphis to West Memphis; it also carried US 63 prior to its truncation (and later rerouting) in Arkansas. The western terminus of

Tennessee State Route 1 State Route 1 (SR 1), known as the Memphis to Bristol Highway, is a mostly- unsigned state highway in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It stretches all the way from the Arkansas state line at Memphis in the southwest corner of the state to Bristo ...

(SR 1) sits on the Tennessee–Arkansas boundary halfway across the bridge.

Description

The bridge consists of five Warren through trusses, each with a length of . Combined with the approach segments, the bridge's total length is . Completed in 1949, it is the only bridge spanning the Mississippi River designed to carry exclusively vehicular traffic that was built before 1950. It was designed by Modjeski and Masters, successors to the firm that designed the

Harahan Bridge The Harahan Bridge is a cantilevered through truss bridge that carries two rail lines and a pedestrian bridge across the Mississippi River between West Memphis, Arkansas, and Memphis, Tennessee. The bridge is owned and operated by Union Pacific ...

, built in 1916 to carry vehicular and rail traffic. The bridge was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 2001. Built before the introduction of the

Interstate Highway System The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, commonly known as the Interstate Highway System, is a network of controlled-access highways that forms part of the National Highway System in the United States. T ...

, the span was not built to Interstate Highway standards; it originally lacked the concrete barrier between the different directions of traffic which, was added later. It was also built with a sidewalk on either side of the roadway, positioned just outside the steel truss girders. The sidewalks, now also separated from the traffic lanes by concrete barriers, are accessible from Memphis city sidewalks on the Tennessee side, but give way to grassy slopes on the shoulders of I-55 on the Arkansas side. The sidewalk and bridge is listed as part of the

Mississippi River Trail The Mississippi River Trail (abbreviated MRT) is a designated bicycle and pedestrian trail that traverses the shores of the Mississippi River in the United States. The trail extends from the headwaters at Lake Itasca in Minnesota to near the mouth ...

. However, travel is not recommended across the sidewalk and is prohibited on the vehicle traffic lanes of the bridge, as the structure is an Interstate Highway crossing. In 2016, a pedestrian/bicycle path on the neighboring Harahan Bridge made crossing the river safer and eliminated the need to use the I-55 bridge. Despite common references to this bridge as a "Memorial Bridge", most likely resulting from its opening shortly after World War II, there is no evidence that this bridge was ever intended to be a memorial to anything. There is no mention of any memorial intent on the bridge's nameplates, including a dedicatory poem on one nameplate (officially attributed to Walter Chandler) that appears to focus on the traffic expected to cross the bridge rather than any memorial. (This is in contrast to the Harahan Bridge, which was named for a railroad executive who died in an accident during the bridge's construction.) Crump himself, for whom the boulevard originally leading to the bridge was named, lived until 1954; Chandler lived until 1967.

Bridge history

Planning and construction

The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge was inspired by the ever increasing flow of traffic on the single-lane cantilevered "wagonways" of the

from its opening in 1916 all the way to this bridge's opening in 1949. This increased traffic led to the incorporation of

in 1927 where the

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the O ...

roadways leading to the Harahan Bridge came together, as well as the 1930 replacement by the Arkansas State Highway Commission (ASHC), the modern-day version of which oversees the

Arkansas Department of Transportation The Arkansas Department of Transportation (ArDOT), formerly the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department, is a government department in the U.S. state of Arkansas. Its mission is to provide a safe, efficient, aesthetically pleasing and e ...

, of the original wooden viaduct leading from West Memphis to the Harahan Bridge. Most of the 1930 viaduct was reused for the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge until the present

I-55 Interstate 55 (I-55) is a major Interstate Highway in the central United States. As with most primary Interstates that end in a five, it is a major cross-country, north–south route, connecting the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes. The h ...

viaduct replaced it in the 1980's; a small portion of that viaduct now serves as the Arkansas entrance to the Harahan Bridge's Big River Crossing (built on one of its former "wagonways"). M&A Bridge nameplate

Planning for the new bridge began in 1939 with the creation of a joint Memphis-Arkansas bridge commission headed by longtime Memphis political boss E. H. Crump.

Walter Chandler Walter "Clift" Chandler (October 5, 1887 – October 1, 1967) was an American politician from Tennessee and a Representative for the ninth district of Tennessee. He served as mayor of Memphis, Tennessee from 1940 to 1946 and in 1955. Biograph ...

, another notable Tennessee politician who was a member of the Crump machine at that time, also served on the bridge commission. Simultaneously with the bridge, Crump planned a new bypass street leading to the bridge, avoiding both downtown Memphis and historic African American neighborhoods to the south, which came to be known as Crump Boulevard. Aretha Franklin was born on Lucy Avenue, in just such a neighborhood south of Crump Boulevard, in 1942 before moving eventually to

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

where she became famous as the Queen of Soul. By May 1944, the ASHC and Tennessee's Department of Highway and Public Works (now the

Tennessee Department of Transportation The Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) is a multimodal agency with statewide responsibilities in roadways, aviation, public transit, waterways, and railroads. The mission of TDOT is to provide a safe and reliable transportation syste ...

or TDOT) hired Modjeski and Masters, the firm founded by

Ralph Modjeski Ralph Modjeski (born Rudolf Modrzejewski; January 27, 1861 – June 26, 1940) was a Polish-American civil engineer who achieved prominence as "America's greatest bridge builder." Life He was born in Bochnia, called Galicia at the time, on Janu ...

who designed the Harahan Bridge in 1916 and helped design the area's original

Frisco Bridge The Frisco Bridge, previously known as the Memphis Bridge, is a cantilevered through truss bridge carrying a rail line across the Mississippi River between West Memphis, Arkansas, and Memphis, Tennessee. Construction At the time of the Memphis br ...

in 1892, to prepare plans for this bridge even though Modjeski himself died in 1940. Though truss bridges increasingly fell out of fashion after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, this bridge's truss design, especially its main span, was largely dictated by the neighboring Frisco & Harahan Bridges and the established navigation channel beneath them. Construction on the bridge began on September 12, 1945, and the bridge opened to traffic on December 17, 1949.

Later history

Though Crump Boulevard was originally intended to serve as the main access to the bridge from Memphis, TDOT replaced the west end of Crump Boulevard with a stretch of I-55 in the 1960's. The issues resulting from the cloverleaf interchange at I-55 and Crump, required to accommodate a 90-degree change in I-55's direction onto the bridge, have led to more recent traffic problems including a failed TDOT plan that would have required a long-term closure of I-55 and the bridge in order to reconstruct the interchange, as well as lane closures and other issues at the interchange during the 2021 I-40 bridge closure during which this was the only open bridge at Memphis. Memphis-Arkansas Bridge Poem - panoramio

Memphis-Arkansas Bridge Poem - panoramio

On August 12, 2012, a cyclist was killed after being struck by a vehicle when using the shoulder approaching the bridge. On December 23, 2014, numerous news sources reported that the FBI had released an official statement warning local law enforcements of a threat to the bridge during that month. The FBI stated, "according to an anonymous complainant... ISIS instructed an ISIS member, a presumed USPER (U.S. person) in Memphis, with a direct order to blow up the Memphis–Arkansas bridge on an unknown date, activating ISIS terror cells in the United States." Security was heightened, but the threat was later discredited.

Traffic mix

Annual average daily traffic Annual average daily traffic, abbreviated AADT, is a measure used primarily in transportation planning, transportation engineering and retail location selection. Traditionally, it is the total volume of vehicle traffic of a highway or road for a ...

(AADT) figures reported by the

for 2018, three years before the notable 2021 closure of the

I-40 Interstate 40 (I-40) is a major east–west Interstate Highway running through the south-central portion of the United States. At a length of , it is the third-longest Interstate Highway in the country, after I-90 and I-80. From west to ea ...

or "new bridge", show that the I-55 "old bridge" carries substantially more vehicles (64,520) than the I-40 bridge (37,308) despite its being older and narrower. Meanwhile, similar figures reported by the

for 2020, the year before the I-40 bridge closure, from devices that also measure percentage of truck traffic suggest that though the I-40 bridge had slightly more vehicles (47,000) than the I-55 bridge (45,000), the I-55 bridge actually had a higher percentage of truck traffic (37 percent) than the I-40 bridge (26 percent). These figures, seemingly incongruous especially after the issues caused by the 2021 I-40 bridge closure which forced all traffic crossing the river at Memphis (including trucks) to use this bridge, may be explainable by way of the routing of I-40, I-55 and

U.S. 78 U.S. Route 78 (US 78) is an east–west United States highway that runs for 715 miles (1,151 km) from Memphis, Tennessee, to Charleston, South Carolina. From Byhalia, Mississippi to Birmingham, Alabama, US 78 is concurrent with Interstate ...

(supplanted in part by

I-22 I22 or I 22 may refer to: * Interstate 22 Interstate 22 (I-22) is a Interstate Highway in the US states of Mississippi and Alabama, connecting I-269 near Byhalia, Mississippi, to I-65 near Birmingham, Alabama. I-22 is also Corridor X of ...

and its connecting freeway I-269) thru the Memphis area, as well as the locations of major distribution and transportation hubs in the area ranging from the

FedEx Express FedEx Express, a subsidiary of FedEx Corporation, is a major American cargo airline based in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. As of 2020, it is one of the world's largest airlines in terms of fleet size and freight tons flown. It is the na ...

"super hub" at

Memphis International Airport Memphis International Airport is a civil-military airport located southeast of Downtown Memphis in Shelby County, Tennessee, United States. It is the primary international airport serving Memphis. It covers and has four runways., effective A ...

to regional grocery warehouses operated by

Kroger The Kroger Company, or simply Kroger, is an American retail company that operates (either directly or through its subsidiaries) supermarkets and multi-department stores throughout the United States. Founded by Bernard Kroger in 1883 in Cinci ...

br>
and

Associated Wholesale Grocers Associated Wholesale Grocers, Inc. (AWG) is the United States's largest cooperative food wholesaler to independently owned supermarkets and grocery stores. It serves more than 4,000 locations in 36 states and from 8 full-line wholesale divisions ...

br>
Despite the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1971 decision in '' Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe'' that led to the cancellation of I-40's originally planned route thru

Overton Park :''Overton Park may also refer to the U.S. Supreme Court case, Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe'' Overton Park is a large, public park in Midtown Memphis, Tennessee. The park grounds contain the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis ...

(which in part dictated the location of the I-40 bridge), the advantages of I-40 as a cross-country interstate proved to be undeniable; thus the I-40 bridge is used by long-haul truckers & other cross-country travelers, as well as by commuters from

going to & from jobs in downtown Memphis which is generally closer to that bridge. Meanwhile, most Memphis area distribution and transportation hubs are in the southern part of Memphis and its

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

suburbs such as Southaven and

Olive Branch The olive branch is a symbol of peace and victory associated with customs of ancient Greece and connected with supplication to gods and persons in power. It is found in most cultures of the Mediterranean basin and became associated with peace ...

, with ready access to I-55 via such routes as I-240 across south Memphis (not to be confused with the I-240 in north Memphis that became I-40 after the Overton Park cancellation), U.S. 78, I-22 and I-269; thru truck traffic to & from

Birmingham, Alabama Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of the U.S. state of Alabama. Birmingham is the seat of Jefferson County, Alabama's most populous county. As of the 2021 census estimates, Birmingham had a population of 197,575, down 1% fr ...

and points east (such as

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

) also flows thru Mississippi & south Memphis via U.S. 78, I-22, I-269 and I-55. Finally, though both I-40 and I-55 go thru Memphis, they actually cross in

and not Memphis proper; the rerouting of I-40, along with both the original and current designs of its interchange with I-240 west of Overton Park, do not facilitate high volumes of trucks from the south seeking to use the I-40 bridge. Thus, it is generally easier for trucks going between Memphis (as well as Birmingham via U.S. 78 / I-22) and points west of Memphis, ranging from Arkansas grocery stores all the way to

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

, to use this bridge to reach I-40 at West Memphis rather than the I-40 bridge itself, on top of the expected traffic using I-55 (and in some cases

I-57 Interstate 57 (I-57) is a north–south Interstate Highway in Missouri and Illinois that parallels the old Illinois Central Railroad for much of its route. It runs from Sikeston, Missouri, at I-55 to Chicago, Illinois, at I-94. I-57 ess ...

further north) to reach

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

and other major Northern cities.

In popular culture

Bridge can be seen in scenes of the 1989 film

Great Balls of Fire! (film) ''Great Balls of Fire!'' is a 1989 American biographical drama film directed by Jim McBride and starring Dennis Quaid as rockabilly pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis. Based on a biography by Myra Lewis and Murray M. Silver Jr., the screenplay is writte ...

starring

Dennis Quaid Dennis William Quaid (born April 9, 1954) is an American actor known for a wide variety of dramatic and comedic roles. First gaining widespread attention in the late 1970s, some of his notable credits include '' Breaking Away'' (1979), '' The ...

Jerry Lee Lewis Jerry Lee Lewis (September 29, 1935October 28, 2022) was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Nicknamed "The Killer", he was described as " rock & roll's first great wild man". A pioneer of rock and roll and rockabilly music, Lewis ma ...

. The bridge is referenced in the

Chuck Berry Charles Edward Anderson Berry (October 18, 1926 – March 18, 2017) was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist who pioneered rock and roll. Nicknamed the " Father of Rock and Roll", he refined and developed rhythm and blues into th ...

song "

," where it is simply called "the Mississippi bridge."Cheseborough, Steve, ''Blues Traveling: The Holy Sites of Delta Blues, Fourth Edition''. Univ. Press of Mississippi. p.40

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Memphis and Arkansas Bridge Bridges completed in 1949 Bridges over the Mississippi River Bridges in Memphis, Tennessee Interstate 55 U.S. Route 61 Road bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Arkansas Transportation in Crittenden County, Arkansas Buildings and structures in West Memphis, Arkansas Road bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Tennessee U.S. Route 64 U.S. Route 70 U.S. Route 79 Bridges on the Interstate Highway System Great River Road U.S. Route 63 Bridges of the United States Numbered Highway System National Register of Historic Places in Crittenden County, Arkansas Steel bridges in the United States Cantilever bridges in the United States Warren truss bridges in the United States Interstate vehicle bridges in the United States 1949 establishments in Tennessee 1949 establishments in Arkansas