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'And then there was one': Remaining old I-74 bridge towers topple Sunday morning
Controlled explosion demolishes Mississippi River bridge
It was the boom that could be heard around the Quad Cities.
Explosives toppled the remaining iconic green towers and cables of the old I-74 bridge, sending them into the Mississippi River Sunday morning.
More than 100 onlookers on foot, bike and lawn chairs took in the marvel from the Iowa side of the Quad Cities.
“And then there was one,” said Stephanie Maxwell, who came to watch with her husband, Carl Shock.
“We woke up this morning and we’re like, we really want to go down there?” Shock said. “And I’m like absolutely, we have to go down there because it’s like a new chapter.”
Just after 7:30 a.m., explosives took down the bridge, leaving just the white arches of the $1 billion new I-74 bridge, which fully opened in 2021. Helm Civil holds the $23 million demolition contract. The company has worked with the Iowa and Illinois Departments of Transportation to dismantle the old I-74 bridge, including removing decking and bringing down the on-ramps. The eastbound towers and cables were demolished by the same method on June 18.
Maxwell grew up in Montana and attended Marycrest College in Davenport. She said the bridge was like her doorway to Iowa when she came for the first time, as well as when family or friends would come visit.
“My niece and my nephew would come every summer and it was like, this is it, this is the Mississippi River,” she said. “We would drive across the bridge and they would know ‘Oh we’re almost to your house, Aunt Stephanie!’”
Maxwell recalled running across the bridge the two times she ran the Quad Cities Marathon, a key portion of the multi-city fall road race.
Shock, who ran cross-country at Augustana College in Rock Island, ran it once, too. But, Maxwell reminded him with a laugh, with almost no training.
“I trained, he didn’t,” Maxwell said with a laugh. “He was like, ‘I think I’ll just go do the marathon.’”
“Three days before it and she’s like, ‘Well, how many miles you put in?’” Shock said, smiling. “I said, ‘Well, I did a training run of three miles.’ She goes, ‘Oh good luck with that.’”
He finished but, Maxwell reminded him, with a slower time than hers.
After the booming explosion, Landon Stradt, 6, said he may need to get his hearing checked.
“It was awesome, but now I got to see a ear doctor,” he said.
Landon said his favorite part was when the bridge parts “fell into the water in a big splash.”
The huge splash surprised him.
“I thought it was just going to like do a splash like when I jump in,” Landon said.
“I wouldn’t want to be the cleanup workers,” he added.
His mom, Mandy Stradt, called it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for her kids to see.
One pier remains to protect endangered mussel
All that remained Sunday of the 88-year-old bridge were the steel and concrete piers.
The first of the twin spans was built in 1935 as a toll bridge. At the time, the Government Bridge was the only other cross-river bridge. Otherwise, residents crossed via ferry.
A booming population prompted the construction of a second span, placed just west of the original, that began in July 1958 and finished in November 1959.
Five years later, it was incorporated into Interstate 74. The federal government did away with the bridge’s tollbooth and sidewalk and gave it new connection spans and on-and-off ramps.
Demolition of the old bridge is on schedule and on budget, DOT construction engineer Ahmad M. Afifeh, previously told the Quad-City Times.
One of the piers that is built into the riverbed is being spared. Called “Pier K” and located near the Moline riverfront, it will remain in the river to avoid disturbing a colony of endangered mussels that is located there.
Some closures in the area were to remain in effect into Monday and possibly following days.
Barb Ickes of the Quad-City Times contributed reporting.
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