Piscataqua River Bridge

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**Piscataqua River Bridge**
The Piscataqua River Bridge seen from the Sarah Mildred Long Bridge in Kittery, ME.
Official name	Piscataqua River Bridge
Carries	Interstate 95
Crosses	Piscataqua River
Locale	Porthsmouth, NH and Kittery, ME
Maintained by	New Hampshire DOT^[1]
ID number	021702580012800^[2]
Design	Steel Through Arch
Total length	1372.5 m (4,503 ft)
Width	29.9 m (98 ft)
Vertical clearance	7.1 m (23.3 ft)
Clearance below	41.1 m (134.8 ft)
AADT	60700 (1990)
Opening date	1972
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The Piscataqua River Bridge, is a cantilevered through arch bridge that crosses the Piscataqua River, carrying six lanes of Interstate 95 and connecting Portsmouth, New Hampshire with Kittery, Maine.

The bridge is the third modern span crossing the Piscataqua between Portsmouth and Kittery, but it is the first fixed span to do so. The two older spans, the Memorial Bridge and the Sarah Mildred Long Bridge, are both lift bridges, built as such to accommodate ship traffic along the Piscataqua. The high arch design of the Piscataqua River Bridge eliminates the need for a movable roadway.

As part of the Interstate Highway System, Interstate 95 was routed along the New Hampshire Turnpike, which paralleled US 1 through New Hampshire's seacoast from the Massachusetts border to the Turnpike's end at the Portsmouth Circle in 1960.^[3] Between the Portsmouth Circle and the beginning of the Maine Turnpike, there was a gap in I-95 that was filled by the US 1 Bypass, crossing over the Sarah Mildred Long Bridge. Since the Long bridge is a lift bridge with only a two lane roadway, it was far from meeting Interstate Highway standards.

The decision was made to extend I-95 north from the New Hampshire Turnpike at Portsmouth and south from the Maine Turnpike in Kittery, and join the roads with an uninterrupted high speed span over the Piscataqua. Work on the bridge was completed in 1972, and the I-95 extension to it in Maine was completed the following year.^[4] This resulted in an oddity in exit numbering in Maine. At the time, both Maine and New Hampshire numbered their exits in sequential order rather than mile-based numbering, and while New Hampshire's extended I-95 simply added exits 4 through 7, the extension in Maine was south of its Turnpike, so I-95 there gained four new exits, starting with exit 1. Maine decided not to renumber the exits on the Turnpike, however, so the end result was that after crossing the bridge into Maine, I-95 had exits 1 to 4, and then after joining the Maine Turnpike it had a second set of exits 1 through 4, with different destinations. This lasted for over twenty years until 2004, when Maine DOT switched to a mile-based numbering scheme for its exits and made the numbering for exits along the full length of I-95 continuous.