Cut River Bridge

Visit MDOT's Page For This Historic Bridge

This bridge is large enough that MDOT actually has made this bridge an area attraction. If only they would do this for some of the smaller historic bridges. Although it carries heavy traffic on US-2 above, it is in a park setting below, in the very deep Cut River Valley. Cut River is not really much of a river, or even a creek; this bridge would be more aptly named Cut Valley Bridge. The bridge is really taking the road over the valley more so than the river.

This bridge is a steel deck cantilever bridge. This structure type is much more common in more hilly states like Pennsylvania, but is quite rare in Michigan. The structure has extensive latticing on its members, which are all very massive. The bridge retains original standard-plan metal guardrails on the sidewalks that flank the roadway on each side. It also retains standard MSHD plaques. The bridge appears to have been designed as an attraction even when it was built, since sidewalks above and below the bridge are present. The two main piers are attractive cut stone arches.

It is interesting to note that the dates for construction of the different parts have a difference of five years, which is a very long time, even for a bridge of this size. That is, until you see that the dates of construction range from 1941 to 1946, which encompass World War II. Due to the demand of steel for the war, construction on the bridge was halted during the war. While construction of halted, people could take a trail to get out to the bridge and view the giant bridge which was at the time in the middle of nowhere. In my opinion, this bridge is historic simply for the time period during which it was built.

Due to the size of this bridge, photographing all the technical angles I wanted to properly document it was difficult. However, armed with a zoom camera, the large number of trusses on this bridge make it a fun bridge to take artistic sorts of pictures.