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The old wooden bridge over the Bryant near Bertha was
one of the oldest in Missouri. |
| Bertha Bridge carries County Road 345 across the Bryant.
CR 345 connects Highway 95 just south of Gentryville with N Highway
just north of Rockbridge. Click on the map to see a bigger map
of the watershed. |
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| Now they've replaced
the last wooden bridge in our watershed. |
| This is how the work looked in early February 2001. |
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By April, it's almost done. |
| This topo map shows where the bridge is. The crossing
is just upstream of a contour line. The line shows a change in altitude.
Click on the picture to see a bigger topo map. |
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These are concrete piers (supports). The new bridge
is a lot wider and stronger than the old one. |
| The Old Bridge |
| The old bridge carried only one lane of traffic. |
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Its wooden frame and surface rested on concrete. The
new bridge's framework is steel. |
| These pictures show how
they put in the concrete piers for the new bridge. |
| They dug a hole in the river bottom. Dirt and rock
made a dam around the hole to keep the river out. When water leaked
in, a pump pumped it back into the river. |
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Workers drilled down to the bedrock. The concrete piers
must rest on solid rock to hold against the heavy weight of floodwater. |
| It takes heavy equipment to build this bridge. John
Burk Construction, Inc., of Springfield, is the contractor. This is
the same company that built the Highway 160 bridge over the North
Fork at Tecumseh. |
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By June, it's finished. Here's the new bridge over
the Bryant. |
New Bertha Bridge 
