Rio Grande Gorge Bridge

About this property

The Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, locally known as the "Gorge Bridge" or the "High Bridge", is a steel deck arch bridge across the Rio Grande Gorge 10 miles (16 km) northwest of Taos, New Mexico, United States. Roughly 600 feet (180 m) above the Rio Grande, it is the seventh highest bridge in the United States. The bridge was started in 1963 and completed in 1965. It was dedicated on September 10, 1965 and is a part of U.S. Route 64, a major east–west road. The span is 1,280 feet (390 m): two 300-foot-long (91 m) approach spans with a 600-foot-long (180 m) main center span. In 1966, the American Institute of Steel Construction awarded the bridge "Most Beautiful Steel Bridge" in the "Long Span" category. A $2.4 million "facelift" to the bridge was completed in September 2012. This year-long project included repair and restoration work to the 50-year-old bridge including structural steelwork, a new concrete deck surface, new sidewalks, ramps, curbs, and gutters. The bridge has been the site of numerous suicides. Authorities are studying ways to deter suicides, including the construction of suicide barriers, such as higher fencing, netting, or more security, and also hotline buttons, but cite money as a major reason no steps have been taken. Although one of the highest bridges in the United States, exactly how high the main span is above ground is unclear. When it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1967, this distance was cited as 650 ft (200 m) over the Rio Grande. Today, that number is still widely used. However, in 2010, the Highest Bridges Web Site came out with a substantially lower (565 ft (172 m)) figure. This height was most likely derived using a laser range finder but the site did not specifically reference it that way. Wikipedia used this 565 ft (172 m) figure in 2012 when updating its List of bridges in the United States by height, but kept the 650 ft (200 m) figure for the bridge in its Rio Grande del Norte National Monument article. In 2015, a height of 600 ft (180 m) appeared on the scene. An author of a bridge book noted this discrepancy and recommended this compromise number be used until the matter was authoritatively resolved. This height figure then cropped up in a January 2016 Materials Performance Magazine white paper about the bridge's then just completed inspection by the New Mexico Department of Transportation. The bridge has appeared in many films, including Natural Born Killers, Twins, White Sands, She's Having a Baby, The Signal, Paul, Vacation, Wild Hogs, and Terminator Salvation. National Register of Historic Places listings in Taos County, New Mexico

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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