Rachel Carson Bridge

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**Rachel Carson Bridge**
From south bank of the Allegheny, looking NE, oblique view of roadway and south tower, showing eyebar links for main suspenders and roadway suspenders, as well as main compressive stiffening girders dividing roadway from sidewalks
Official name	Rachel Carson Bridge
Carries	Ninth Street
Longest span	410 ft (xxx m)
Total length	840 ft spans (xxx m) (main and 2 215 side spans) 995 ft with approaches (xxx m)
Width	38 ft roadway (formerly 2 vehicle, 2 tramway tracks, now 2 wide vehicle lanes) 10 ft sidewalks (outside the compressive plate girder) or total 62 ft
Vertical clearance	above 78 ft towers
Clearance below	deck is 40.3 ft above Emsworth Dam normal pool level (710 ft above sea level)
Opening date	26 November 1926

Rachel Carson Bridge is the official name of the Ninth Street Bridge over the Allegheny River in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Named for the naturalist Rachel Carson, a Pittsburgh native, it is one of three parallel bridges called The Three Sisters, the others being the Roberto Clemente Bridge and the Andy Warhol Bridge. The Three Sisters are self-anchored suspension bridges and are significant because they are the only trio of nearly identical bridges—as well as the first self-anchored suspension spans—built in the United States.

The bridge was renamed on Earth Day, April 22, 2006, after years of lobbying by Esther Barazzone, president of Chatham College, the alma mater of the renown environmentalist. Carson was born in 1907 in Springdale, Pennsylvania in a farmhouse 18 miles up the Allegheny River, now the Rachel Carson Homestead.