Yankton 2011 Visitors Guide
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Historic Bridge To Get New L By Nathan Johnson nathan.johnson@yankton.net For eight decades, cars and trucks rolled across the Meridian Bridge in Yankton s downtown. By this fall, officials hope the traffic consists of bicycles and pedestrians. Since the spring of 2010, the 3,000-foot double-deck bridge has been undergoing a $4.8 million conversion to make it a recreational structure. The process includes reinforcing many of the bridge s steel joints, adding railings and installing lights. The original plans called for the conversion to be done in the fall of 2010. However, construction crews encountered more steel deterioration than anticipated, and it slowed the process. Before construction of the Meridian Bridge, people who wanted to cross the Missouri River at Yankton had to use a pontoon bridge or wait for the water to develop a sheet of ice. Recognizing that the city needed a bridge for future 40 VISITORS GUIDE YANKTON, SOUTH DAKOTA development, locals invested in Meridian Highway Bridge Company stocks and oversaw the bridge s planning. It opened to traffic in October 1924. The bridge was one of the last major links in an international highway running from Winnipeg, Canada, to Mexico City, Mexico. The roadway traveled along the Sixth Principal Meridian and was commonly referred to as the Meridian Highway thus giving the bridge its name. The top deck handled two-lane traffic at first because a railroad was intended for the lower deck. The railroad never came, and the lower deck was eventually opened to regular traffic. Originally, operators could also raise the portion of the bridge between the two piers to allow boats to pass under it.
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Historic Bridge To Get New L By Nathan Johnson nathan.johnson@yankton.net For eight decades, cars and trucks rolled across the Meridian Bridge in Yankton s downtown. By this fall, officials hope the traffic consists of bicycles and pedestrians. Since the spring of 2010, the 3,000-foot double-deck bridge has been undergoing a $4.8 million conversion to make it a recreational structure. The process includes reinforcing many of the bridge s steel joints, adding railings and installing lights. The original plans called for the conversion to be done in the fall of 2010. However, construction crews encountered more steel deterioration than anticipated, and it slowed the process. Before construction of the Meridian Bridge, people who wanted to cross the Missouri River at Yankton had to use a pontoon bridge or wait for the water to develop a sheet of ice. Recognizing that the city needed a bridge for future 40 VISITORS GUIDE YANKTON, SOUTH DAKOTA development, locals invested in Meridian Highway Bridge Company stocks and oversaw the bridge s planning. It opened to traffic in October 1924. The bridge was one of the last major links in an international highway running from Winnipeg, Canada, to Mexico City, Mexico. The roadway traveled along the Sixth Principal Meridian and was commonly referred to as the Meridian Highway thus giving the bridge its name. The top deck handled two-lane traffic at first because a railroad was intended for the lower deck. The railroad never came, and the lower deck was eventually opened to regular traffic. Originally, operators could also raise the portion of the bridge between the two piers to allow boats to pass under it.