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One of just 99 pre-1936 survivors will become history

Franklin D. Roosevelt was still early in his presidency in 1935. Babe Ruth played his final pro baseball game — not for the Yankees but for the Boston Braves. Living rooms around the nation were transformed as the world's first television program was broadcast and the board game Monopoly was introduced.

Gasoline cost 19 cents per gallon, a new car cost $580, and the first of more than 100 million vehicle trips was taken across the new two-lane bridge over the Weiser River.

In early March, construction will begin on a replacement for the 78-year-old bridge south of Weiser. Its successor will be a three-lane structure. The project should be completed by the end of this year. The Weiser River Bridge is one of 99 bridges on the state system built before 1936 that is still in use. Thirty-seven of them have been repaired or reconstructed to some degree. But the Weiser bridge is an exception -- it remains relatively untouched the past three-quarters of a century.

The existing bridge has 26 feet of drivable width, but the new one will nearly double the width to 48 feet. An average of about 7,300 vehicles use the bridge daily.

In addition to replacing the aging bridge, crews also will reconstruct more than 650 feet of highway approaches on both sides of the structure.

The existing bridge has a sidewalk and two 13-foot lanes but no shoulders. The replacement will have two 12-foot lanes and a 12-foot center turn lane and a sidewalk on the west side.

Pedestrians and cyclists will feel safer, as the project features a two-foot buffer next to the decorative bridge railing, a five-foot shoulder and a five-foot sidewalk on the west side of the bridge.

“The old bridge has lived out its life and needs to be replaced,” said David Barrett, ITD project manager. He also said “The new bridge will be as much as four feet higher in elevation than the original, which should aid in flood relief. The threat of flood is an annual spring occurrence for the Weiser River.”

Braun-Jensen, of Payette, is the prime contractor on the $4.8 million project.