New Mississippi River bridge reaches milestone

Construction crews on Cape Girardeau's new Mississippi River span bridged the gap between the towering Missouri shore pier and high ground on Friday, marking a new milestone for the $100 million project that is scheduled to be competed before year's end.

Steel girders now link the western-most pier with the pier on the Missouri shore north of the dry docks.

The girders form the base for the bridge deck of the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge, which is taking shape with the installation of pre-cast blocks of concrete as well as on-the-scene poured concrete. The span is supported by steel cables attached to the piers.

"It will be more significant when we get all the cables in," said Stan Johnson, Missouri Department of Transportation engineer.

The steel cables are housed in white plastic pipe that runs diagonally from the bridge frame to the tall pier on the Missouri shore and the one in the middle of the Mississippi River.

The nearly 4,000-foot-long bridge will replace an antiquated narrow bridge that opened in 1928.

In all, the structure will have 15 piers. But most of those support the Illinois approach span that will connect to the 2,000-foot-long cable-stay structure that forms the main span of the bridge. The cable-stay span has four main piers.

Raymond and Gene Myers intently watched the construction work Friday afternoon from their car parked on the River Campus grounds.

Gene Myers watched the construction with the aid of her binoculars, a telescope resting on her lap. The Cape Girardeau couple spends hours almost every day watching the bridge work. They've made it a study.

"We try to figure out what they are going to do next," said Raymond Myers, a retired chemist who was employed by a company that manufactured carpet padding.

"One of the fascinating things to watch is the stringing of the cables," he said.

The Myers love watching construction work. They both spent a lot of time observing the building of the Show Me Center in the 1980s. They liked what they saw. But the Myers said the bridge project is even more compelling.

"They scamper around," Raymond Myers, 77, said of the bridge workers.

He and his wife were among 200 people who witnessed the groundbreaking ceremony for the bridge in July 1996. Raymond Myers said he and his wife plan to be around to see it finished too.

"I want that bridge done," he said.

So does Larry Owens, project manager for Traylor Brothers, the Evansville, Ind., contractor erecting the four-lane bridge.

Owens said crews continue to extend the bridge structure between the Missouri shore pier and the pier in the middle of the river. The two sections, supported by steel cables, could be linked together over the river by August, he said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123