Take a bunch of pictures, folks. The Oklahoma Department of Transportation will begin a project today to eventually replace and remove the historic Horse Creek Bridge near Afton.
The Miami News-Record in nearby Miami, Oklahoma, has the story:
Public hearings were heard in 2016 regarding the Horse Creek Bridge, which was built in 1936 and now is deemed structurally deficient.
The bridge, which has pedestrian walkways on both sides, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places due to its association with Route 66 and design. Built during the Great Depression, it was a Public Works Administration project.
It’s the only way in or out of town on the east side of Afton.
A group of Afton residents had pushed to save the bridge, but “it’s just not able to handle traffic,” said Kenna Mitchell, Oklahoma Department of Transportation Division 8 public information manager.
“If you get two wide trucks going across it at the same time, you have to hold your breath and hope you make it across.”
After a public hearing last year about the bridge, Oklahoma Route 66 historian Jim Ross wrote in an email:
With the Horse Creek Bridge, it is about money. There is ample room for an offset alignment and new bridge, but they complain about the cost of new right of way. Their official reason is that a new bridge will disturb bats roosting nearby. But they also dismissed an option to rehab the bridge because it will disturb bats roosting under the bridge, a direct contradiction. I can’t say how many consulting parties there were involved with the Horse Creek Bridge Section 106 Review, but I can tell you that at least five of them, myself included, refused to sign off on the Memorandum of Agreement between ODOT and SHPO [State Historical Preservation Office].
The state of Oklahoma holds a terrible record in maintaining and preserving its bridges over the last 30 years, so it shouldn’t be surprising it wouldn’t preserve this one, either.
State highway officials expect to finish the project in late 2019. So that generally gives travelers about six months, maybe less, to get photos of the bridge before it’s dismantled.
The newspaper reported that ODOT also will document the bridge before it’s removed.
(Image of the Horse Creek Bridge in Afton, Oklahoma, by Abe Ezekowitz via Wikimedia Commons)
I drove through on Friday and the construction signs were going up.