Seven Mile Bridge - Misplaced Pages

Bridge in Florida, United States of America

Seven Mile Bridge
Seven Mile Bridge with the original in the foreground
Coordinates	24°41′54″N 81°10′36″W / 24.6982°N 81.1767°W / 24.6982; -81.1767
Carries	2 lanes of US 1
Crosses	Moser Channel
Locale	Florida Keys, Monroe County, Florida
Maintained by	Florida Department of Transportation
ID number	900101
Characteristics
Design	Precast segmented box girder bridge
Total length	35,719.2 feet 6.765 miles (10.887 km)
Width	38 feet (12 m)
Longest span	135 feet (41 m)
Clearance below	65 feet (20 m)
History
Construction cost	$45 million (equivalent to $120 million in 2023 dollars)
Opened	May 24, 1982
Location

The Seven Mile Bridge is a bridge in the Florida Keys, in Monroe County, Florida, United States. It connects Knight's Key (part of the city of Marathon, Florida) in the Middle Keys to Little Duck Key in the Lower Keys. Among the longest bridges in existence when it was built, it is part of the Overseas Highway in the Keys, which is part of the 2,369-mile (3,813 km) U.S. Route 1.

There are two bridges in this location. The modern bridge is open to vehicular traffic; the older one only to pedestrians and cyclists. The older bridge, originally known as the Knights Key-Pigeon Key-Moser Channel-Pacet Channel Bridge, was constructed from 1909 to 1912 under the direction of Henry Flagler and Clarence S. Coe as part of the Florida East Coast Railway's Key West Extension, also known as the Overseas Railroad.

History

After the railroad was damaged by the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, the line was sold to the United States government, which refurbished Seven Mile Bridge for automobile use. Unsupported sections were added in 1935 to widen it for vehicular traffic. Dismantled trackage was recycled, painted white, and used as guardrails. It had a swing span to allow passage of boats in the Moser Channel of the Intracoastal Waterway into Hawk Channel, near where the bridge crosses Pigeon Key, a small island that held a work camp for Flagler's railroad. Hurricane Donna in 1960 caused further damage.

In 1977 musician Jimmy Buffett was driving back to Key West when the swing bridge was open and got stuck in the open position causing a 3-hour delay to fix it. To kill time, he said he wrote the song Margaritaville while sitting on the hood of his car waiting for the bridge to reopen.

The current road bridge was constructed from 1978 to 1982.

The vast majority of the original bridge still exists, although the swing span has been removed. The 2.2-mile (3.5 km) section to Pigeon Key, used as a fishing pier and long open to motorized vehicles to give access to the key, was closed to motorized traffic in 2008 after the unsupported sections began to sag. In 2014, the Florida Department of Transportation approved a $77 million plan to restore the old bridge. By 2017, the pedestrian section was closed for extensive repairs, and reopened in January 2022.

Engineering

The new bridge is a box-girder structure built from precast, prestressed concrete sections, comprising 440 spans. Near the center, the bridge rises in an arc to provide 65-foot (20 m)-high clearance for boat passage. The remainder of the bridge is considerably closer to the water surface. The new bridge does not cross Pigeon Key.

The total length of the new bridge is actually 35,862 ft (10,931 m) or 6.79 miles (10.93 km), and is shorter than the original. The bridge carries the Florida Keys aqueduct, supplying water to points west, as well as fiber optic cables, providing telecommunications to and from the lower Keys.

Each April, the bridge is closed for about 2.5 hours on a Saturday for the Seven Mile Bridge Run that commemorates the Florida Keys bridge rebuilding project. The event began in 1982 to commemorate the completion of a federally funded bridge building program that replaced spans that oil tycoon Henry Flagler constructed in the early 1900s to serve as a foundation for his Overseas Railroad.

The Seven Mile Bridge was engineered by Figg & Muller Engineers (who also engineered the much taller Sunshine Skyway Bridge). The structure was completed six months ahead of schedule and has earned eight awards, including an Exceptional Award for Cost Savings Innovation from the Federal Highway Administration.

In fiction

The bridge has been featured in films and television series, such as Road House, Licence to Kill, True Lies, 2 Fast 2 Furious, Burn Notice, and is seen in the upcoming video game Grand Theft Auto VI.

Gallery

Original Bridge

Illustration of FEC train crossing the bridge
Moser Channel swing span in the railroad-era
Approaching Pigeon Key post-highway conversion. Guardrails are made up of rails from the former railroad.
1955 view of the bridge.
Traffic waiting for the open swing span over Moser Channel.
Severed segment after the bridge was closed to traffic.

Current Bridge

Current bridge
Surface of the current bridge with original bridge and Pigeon Key in the background

References

^ Wilkinson, Jerry. "HISTORY of the OVERSEAS HIGHWAY". KEYS HISTOREUM. Historical Preservation Society of the Upper Keys. Retrieved June 1, 2016.
^ Elaine, Glusac (April 3, 2014). "In the Keys, New Plans for an Old Bridge". New York Times. Retrieved January 17, 2015.
Gross, Bonnie. "Florida Keys: The Old Seven Mile Bridge in Marathon". floridarambler.com. Retrieved January 17, 2015.
"Old Florida Keys bridge reopens to pedestrians, bicyclists". AP News. Associated Press. January 12, 2022. Retrieved September 16, 2022.
"StackPath". www.firehouse.com. October 4, 2005.
"Seven Mile Bridge". Structurae.
Reeves, Tony. "Licence to Kill | 1989". The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations. Retrieved February 6, 2018.
Reeves, Tony (September 7, 2014). "True Lies Film Locations". The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations. Archived from the original on November 14, 2017. Retrieved February 6, 2018.
"New Netflix Series and Others Spotlight the Florida Keys". The Florida Keys and Key West. March 2, 2015. Retrieved February 6, 2018.
"2 Fast 2 Furious - Production Notes Page 2". contactmusic.net. June 10, 2003. Archived from the original on July 29, 2017. Retrieved February 6, 2018.

External links

KML file (edit • help) Template:Attached KML/Seven Mile BridgeKML is from Wikidata

Friends of Old Seven website
FIGG Seven Mile Bridge Archived July 16, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
Knight's Key Bridge (1912) at Structurae
Pigeon Key Bridge (1912) at Structurae
Moser Channel Bridge (1912) at Structurae
Pacet Channel Viaduct (1912) at Structurae
Seven Mile Bridge (1982) at Structurae
Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) No. FL-2, "Seven Mile Bridge, Linking Florida Keys, Knight Key, Monroe County, FL"

v t e Florida Keys
Biscayne National Park	Soldier Ragged Boca Chita Sands Elliott Adams Caesar's Rock Meig's Rubicon Reid Porgy Totten Old Rhodes Islandia
Upper keys	Key Largo Island CDP North Tavernier Plantation Island former CDP Windley Upper Matecumbe Tea Table Indian Lignumvitae Lower Matecumbe Islamorada
Middle keys	Craig Fiesta Long Layton Conch Little Duck Key Island CDP Grassy Crawl Little Long Point Fat Deer Vaca Marathon Key Colony Beach Boot Knights
Lower keys	Pigeon Money Little Duck Missouri Ohio Sunshine Bahia Honda Spanish Harbor Scout (West Summerland) No Name Big Pine Torch Little Middle Big Ramrod Summerland Knockemdown Cudjoe Sugarloaf Park Lower Sugarloaf Saddlebunch Shark Geiger Big Coppitt Island CDP East Rockland Rockland Boca Chica Raccoon Stock Island Island CDP Key West Sigsbee Fleming Sunset Wisteria
Outlying islands	Mule Keys Mule Crawfish Archer Joe Ingram Big Mullet Barracouta Cottrell Man Little Mullet Ballast Woman Boca Grande Marquesas Keys Dry Tortugas Loggerhead Key Tortugas Banks (submerged)
Areas	Florida Bay Dry Tortugas National Park Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary National Key Deer Refuge John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park Biscayne Bay Biscayne National Park Key West National Wildlife Refuge Great White Heron National Wildlife Refuge Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge Florida Reef
Other topics	Monroe County Conch Republic Overseas Highway Overseas Railroad Card Sound Bridge Jewfish Creek Bridge Seven Mile Bridge Bahia Honda Rail Bridge Fort Jefferson Theater of the Sea 1935 Labor Day hurricane Hurricane Wilma Hurricane Irma Key Deer Key lime pie Florida Keys Keynoter Key West Citizen

v t e Bridges and tunnels in Florida
Panhandle	Escambia Bay Garcon Point John Gorrie Mid-Bay Pensacola Bay St. George Island Trammell Victory
North	Acosta Bridge of Lions Main Street Buckman Dames Point Fuller Warren Hart Mathews Memorial Strauss Trunnion Little Lake Harris Herman C. McCray Jr. L.E. Buie
West Central	Bayside Clearwater Memorial Courtney Campbell Gandy Howard Frankland Pinellas Bayway Sunshine Skyway Treasure Island
East Central	A. Max Brewer Alma Lee Loy Astor Bennett Bert Dosh Broadway Eau Gallie Granada Lake Jesup Lake Underhill Melbourne Merrill P. Barber Merritt Island NASA Osteen Pete Damon Pineda Port Orange Roosevelt Sebastian Inlet Torry Island Wabasso Whitehair
South	Blue Heron Broad Coral Springs Flagler Memorial Julia Tuttle John F. Kennedy Lehman MacArthur Rickenbacker Royal Park Snow-Reed Thomas B. Manuel Venetian
Southwest	Blackburn Point Bridge Boca Grande Bonita Beach Caloosahatchee Cape Coral Cortez Desoto Edison Fort Hamer Green John Ringling Longboat Pass Matanzas Pass Midpoint Sanibel S.S. Jolley Stan Gober Tom Adams
Keys	Bahia Honda Card Sound Jewfish Creek Long Key Overseas Highway Seven Mile
Tunnels	Henry E. Kinney Port of Miami
Ferries	Drayton Island Fort Gates Mayport
Lists	List of bridges in Florida List of bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Florida List of movable bridges in Florida
– Covered bridge – Swing bridge

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