September 6, 1936
In Oregon, the Yaquina Bay Bridge — nearly a month before its official dedication ceremony — was opened to traffic on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend starting at 8:00 a.m. This 3,260-foot (990-meter)-long arch bridge carries U.S. Highway 1 (formally classified as the Oregon Coast Highway) over a section of Yaquina Bay just south of the city of Newport, and it was the final link of that route in the Beaver State to be completed.
This structure was also one of 11 major bridges along the highway to be designed by renowned bridge engineer Conde McCullough, who worked for the Oregon State Highway Department (the present-day Oregon Department of Transportation) between 1919 and 1935 and again from 1937 until his death in 1946. Construction on the Yaquina Bay Bridge began during the summer of 1934.
McCullough incorporated various elements of the Art Deco, Art Moderne, and Gothic styles into his design for the bridge. The Oregon-based Albany Democrat-Herald praised the newly opened bridge as “a beautiful example of architecture.” This newspaper further noted, “The graceful span is supported at each end by a series of cathedral arches of steel and concrete and a large steel span rises above the center of the channel, 138 feet [42.1 meters] above mean tide, to permit the passage of large ships into {Newport] Harbor.”
The bridge was built with a 27-foot (8.2-meter)-wide roadway flanked by sidewalks on each side. According to employees of the Oregon State Highway Department stationed at the bridge, more than 5,000 automobiles crossed the new structure up until 8:00 p.m. on its opening day. The Albany Democrat-Herald reported, “The Yaquina Bay bridge is one of the most beautiful on the coast and hundreds of people walked over it during the [weekend] to admire the structure and the views it affords.” In 2005, the bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Photo Credit – User: Cacophony (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)
For more information on the Yaquina Bay Bridge, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaquina_Bay_Bridge
Additional information on Conde McCullough is available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conde_McCullough
Transportation History 