New bridge near Hoover Dam delights engineers and tourists alike

BOULDER CITY, Nev. — It is an engineering marvel and an acrophobe's nightmare. And even in its first week, it is a tourist attraction.

Just south of Hoover Dam, which has been called one of the engineering wonders of the world, is a brand new wonder, a massive bridge spanning the Colorado River gorge and connecting Arizona and Nevada. Towering 900 feet above the river in a majestic mountain setting, the 1,900-foot-long bridge is the seventh-highest in the world and the longest single-span concrete arch bridge in the Western Hemisphere. And it offers a commanding view of the dam below.

"How did they do it?" asked Curt Gordon, a postal worker from Las Vegas who joined hundreds of others this week on the bridge's pedestrian walkway. "There's no better view, unless you're in a helicopter."

Not everybody was enjoying the vista, however. Carmen Lee of Dallas had been visiting Las Vegas with her husband when he decided they ought to see the bridge. "I don't like heights," she said, keeping a healthy distance from the guardrail. "Look down there. See how tiny the people are. It's scary."

Over at Hoover Dam, those tiny people were pointing their cameras at the new structure. The bridge opened to traffic on Tuesday night, and to pedestrian traffic on Thursday.

"I'm a civil engineer, and it's amazing to me, just amazing," said Randy Wiggins of Jacksonville, Ala., his head cocked upward in the direction of the bridge. "I've never seen anything quite like it."

Discussed for decades, the bridge is intended to create a faster route between Phoenix and Las Vegas, a major trucking route in the Southwest.

Previously, traffic had to navigate a narrow two-lane highway that went right over the dam. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, trucks were diverted to a more circuitous route through Bullhead City, Ariz., and Laughlin, Nev., out of concern that the dam might be a terrorist target. But traffic continued to be a problem; along the narrow, winding road where drivers like to slow to snap photos of the dam, the crash rate is three times higher than on the rest of Highway 93.

The bridge is officially named the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge. O'Callaghan was a governor of Nevada, a Korean War veteran and a newspaper editor. Tillman played for the Arizona Cardinals football team before joining the Army and dying in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan in 2004.