Eagle Point Bridge

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**Eagle Point Bridge**
The former Eagle Point Bridge
Carries	2 lanes of US 61/US 151
Crosses	Mississippi River
Locale	Dubuque, Iowa and Grant County, Wisconsin
Maintained by	State of Iowa
Design	Truss bridge
Opening date	1902
Destruction date	1983

The Eagle Point Bridge was a very-narrow two lane automobile bridge that connected urban Dubuque, Iowa and rural Grant County, Wisconsin. It was part of the US 61/US 151 route, and was a toll bridge. After the new Dubuque-Wisconsin Bridge was built in 1983, the Eagle Point Bridge was torn down. At the end, the toll was ten cents, both ways, collected on the Iowa side.

The bridge was located near Lock and Dam 11, at the northern edge of Rhomberg Avenue in Dubuque. It was about one mile (2 km) north of the present bridge. The bridge was still structually sound after the new bridge was built, leading some to ask the bridge be kept open as a pedestrian or special use bridge, but the state still tore the bridge down.

Several years after the demolition of the bridge, a restaurant known as the Tollbridge Inn was constructed at what was the Iowa end of the bridge. The restaurant operated for a number of years, until it was torn down to make way for future development.

The bridge was extensively documented in 1982 for the Library of Congress Historic American Engineering Record. The survey consists of 81 black and white photos and 45 data pages detailing construction and history of the bridge.