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Built:
1929- 1930
Designed by: C.P. Turner and Thomas F. McGilvray
Type: Bridge
Maximum height: 227 feet / 69 meters
Maximum length: 386 feet / 118 meters
Location: Lake Avenue
City: Duluth
State: Minnesota
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T
his is the big tourist attraction in Duluth. Designed to carry vehicular and pedestrian traffic over the entrance to Duluth Harbor, the aerial lift bridge was a compact solution to the problem of getting people and goods from one side to the other while allowing huge ships to also pass through the same patch of space. Because of urbanization on both sides of the channel, a traditional bridge was not possible as the approaches would have needed to be extremely long, reducing the utility of the structure. Until the bridge was built, the people of Duluth made do with ferries in the summer and temporary bridges in the winter when the port was frozen. The first bridge in this location was an aerial transfer bridge. This type of bridge has the same steel arch as a lift bridge, but instead of having a stable road surface moving up and down, it has a smaller platform that slides from one bank to the other suspended by a latticework of steel trusses. Aerial transfer bridges are exceedingly rare in North America, though not entirely unheard of in Europe. One had a cameo appearance in the 2000 British film "Billy Elliot." The bridge, itself, is owned and operated by the City of Duluth, but the land and water surrounding it is the property of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Occasionally people who live in Duluth have written to Glass Steel and Stone claiming that their bridge is the only one of its kind in the world. This is not true. There are a number of aerial lift bridges in operation around the world, including the port of Rotterdam in The Netherlands, and much closer to home -- in New Jersey's Meadowlands and other areas surrounding the Port of New York and New Jersey.
**When open, the bridge clearance is 138 feet. When closed, it is 15 feet.
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