Snowden Bridge facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Snowden Bridge |
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Snowden Bridge over the Missouri River
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| Carries | Rail traffic (formerly carried automobile traffic) |
| Crosses | Missouri River |
| Locale | Richland and Roosevelt counties Montana |
| Characteristics | |
| Design | Vertical-lift bridge |
| Total length | 1,159 feet (353 m) |
| Height | 108 feet (33 m) (towers) |
| History | |
| Construction end | December 1913 |
| Statistics | |
| Toll | formerly tolled for automobiles |
The Snowden Bridge is a special railroad bridge built way back in 1913. It crosses the huge Missouri River in Montana, USA. This bridge connects Roosevelt and Richland counties. It's also close to the border with North Dakota.
This bridge is a "vertical-lift" bridge. This means a part of it could be lifted straight up! It's almost exactly like another bridge called the Fairview Lift Bridge, which crosses the Yellowstone River. Both bridges were built by the Montana Eastern Railway.
Building a Giant Bridge
A famous bridge designer named John Alexander Low Waddell created the Snowden Bridge. He used ideas from a bridge in Chicago. When it was finished, the Snowden Bridge was the longest vertical-lift bridge in the whole world! It was 1,159 feet long.
Building it cost a lot of money, about $465,367. That would be more than $10,000,000 today!
How the Lift Part Worked
The government wanted the bridge to have a part that could move. This was so big steamboats could still travel up the Missouri River.
- A special engine in a small house on the bridge could lift the middle part.
- It could go up 43 feet in about 30 minutes.
- There was also a way to lift it by hand, just in case!
The last time the bridge was lifted was in 1935. The lifting parts were taken off in 1943.
Sharing the Bridge
In 1925, a wooden road was added to the bridge. This meant cars and people could also use it, but only one way at a time. The Great Northern Railroad trains still used it too.
It might sound dangerous to share a long, one-way bridge with trains! But people were very careful when crossing it.
In 1977, the Burlington Northern railroad wanted cars to stop using the bridge. So, money was set aside to build a new road bridge nearby. The Snowden Bridge was used by cars until 1985. That's when the MonDak Bridge was finished in North Dakota, giving cars their own crossing.
