John Ringling Causeway (also known as Ringling Bridge or Gil Waters Bridge) is a bridge that extends past the

Sarasota Bay Sarasota Bay is a lagoon located off the central west coast of Florida in the United States. Though no significant single stream of freshwater enters the bay, with a drainage basin limited to 150 square miles in Manatee and Sarasota Counties, it ...

, from

Sarasota Sarasota () is a city in Sarasota County on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The area is renowned for its cultural and environmental amenities, beaches, resorts, and the Sarasota School of Architecture. The city is located in the sout ...

St. Armands Key St. Armands Key is an island in Sarasota Bay off the west coast of Florida in the United States. It is part of the city of Sarasota, Florida. The island is connected to the mainland by the John Ringling Causeway. History A Frenchman named Charl ...

and

Lido Key Lido Key is a barrier island off the coast of Sarasota, Florida, in the United States. It is part of the city of Sarasota and is connected to mainland Sarasota by John Ringling Causeway. Nearby keys To its north is Longboat Key; to its east are B ...

. The bridge, built in 2003, is a segmental

box girder bridge A box girder bridge, or box section bridge, is a bridge in which the main beams comprise girders in the shape of a hollow box. The box girder normally comprises prestressed concrete, structural steel, or a composite of steel and reinf ...

named after

John Ringling John Nicholas Ringling (May 31, 1866 – December 2, 1936) was an American entrepreneur who is the best known of the seven Ringling brothers, five of whom merged the Barnum & Bailey Circus with their own Ringling Bros World's Greatest Shows ...

, one of the founders of the

Ringling Brothers Circus Ringling Bros. World's Greatest Shows is a circus founded in Baraboo, Wisconsin, United States in 1884 by five of the seven Ringling brothers: Albert, August, Otto, Alfred T., Charles, John, and Henry. The Ringling brothers were sons of a Germa ...

and resident of the Sarasota area.

History

The first bridge was built in 1925 by John Ringling, who owned large tracts of land on both Lido and

Longboat Key A longboat is a type of ship's boat that was in use from ''circa'' 1500 or before. Though the Royal Navy replaced longboats with launches from 1780, examples can be found in merchant ships after that date. The longboat was usually the largest boat ...

s. He wanted to develop the islands and financed the cost of the bridge at a cost of approximately $750,000, equivalent to $ in , to connect the islands with the mainland. The ornate bridge opened for traffic on February 7, 1926 and was labelled "one of the greatest engineering accomplishments in the South” by the ''

Sarasota Herald The ''Sarasota Herald-Tribune'' is a daily newspaper, located in Sarasota, Florida, founded in 1925 as the ''Sarasota Herald''. History The newspaper was owned by The New York Times Company from 1982 to 2012. It was then owned by Halifax Media ...

'', which also proclaimed “There are no words adequate with which to express our appreciation.” Ringling donated the bridge to the city in 1927. Around 1950, the first bridge began to show that it could not adequately handle increased traffic to the islands. In 1951, the State Road Department opted to replace the bridge with a four-lane drawbridge, which was completed and opened to traffic in 1959. The drawbridge was built at a cost of $20 million and the original bridge was demolished. Around 2000, the drawbridge began to suffer the same fate as its predecessor. With the drawbridge opening as many as 18 times a day, it was unable to handle increasing amounts of traffic. To remedy the situation, construction began on the current high-span bridge in 2001. The tall bridge opened for traffic in 2003 at a cost of $68 million. Landscaping around the bridge was financed by private donors.

References

{{Sarasota, Florida Road bridges in Florida Bridges completed in 2003 1925 establishments in Florida Box girder bridges in the United States Transportation buildings and structures in Sarasota County, Florida