No, it's on the historic register.
Purcell is the new Bridge. And Asher Bridge is on the other side a ways.
The Purcell bridge is right next to the old location. I did that realignment and lane geometry. 4 lanes, shoulders and sidewalk. Almost 1 mile long.
I also sequenced the construction. South half built first, open traffic, remove old Bridge and build north half.
Edited to add...
I remember when they closed it for repair/rebuild. Caused a lot of people a LOT of heartburn because it's a pretty important road. Going around it was a long way.
Yes but a failure while in service woulda been more catastrophic that the I-40 bridge collapse over the AR river. Purcell bridge was discovered to have rivets that were sub par and about to fail on those trusses. Thee entire 4500 or so feet would have come.down like dominoes. Killing many people. It was.closed like a year if I remember, and yes, the detour was long.
Oh it definitely needed the work, no argument here. I think they were mostly pissed because it was allowed to get that bad.
It was a joke. You know the saying, ... I have a bridge to sell you...
It's a cool bridge. I been across it 3-4 times. About every 12-15 years. I noticed on google earth pro it listed as, Railroad Bridge Road Bridge. Makes sense from satellite view as you can see to the N. the old rail route, partially resurrected as private roads. The width of it never triggered the thought of train all these years, probably because I've been over a bunch of old bridges the likes of this one that were about the same width. And there never were no rails close or remnants of. Also too straight and square with section roads. Some of these old bridges are gone.
My folks lived down there while the Bridge O’ Doom was closed/under construction. It wasn’t just an inconvenience, it was actually a public safety issue—Wadley’s in Purcell provides the ambulance service for the Lex area, so they had to open a temporary location on the Lex side while the bridge was closed. They also had to take folks to Norman instead of Purcell for the duration. (Not a criticism, just an observation—as you noted, a failure of the bridge while in service would’ve been a lot worse.)
A friend of my dad’s was a retired oilfield welder, and he did a lot of the welding on the bridge while they were doing the emergency repairs to get it back open. He said the biggest problem they had was that you can’t weld rust to rust…
The odd thing about that whole mess was that they had the I-35 and Asher bridges under construction when the Bridge O’ Doom had its emergency closure, so that one-lane bridge on 102 was the only bridge across the Canadian for about 50 miles in either direction that was completely open.
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