Big Muddy Speaker Series presents:

Most people's only experience with the Missouri River is crossing it on a bridge. There are 30 highway and railroad bridges that cross the Missouri River within the state of Missouri alone. Their importance to the daily lives of Missouri citizens was made crystal clear in 1993, when only one bridge crossing between St. Charles and Kansas City remained open (the I-70 bridge just downstream of Les Bourgeois) and the Glasgow railroad bridge collapsed.

Dennis Heckman, State Bridge Engineer with the Mo. Dept. of Transportation, will share the difficulties and engineering tricks for building a bridge over such a powerful and unpredictable river. He'll discuss bridges across the state, but especially focus on the latest interstate bridge being expanded: the I-64 Boone Bridge in Chesterfield. The construction of this bridge has had its share of typical impacts from the river, including high water events that broke loose a crane barge, which then collided with the existing bridge, and other high water events that washed away tender boats and temporarily shut down construction.

How do you build a bridge piling (or bent) in the middle of a flowing river? How long are bridges expected to last? What does flooding do to a bridge? Find out this stuff and more!