"The Platte Purchase Bridge was a continuous truss bridge over the Missouri River that handled northbound U.S. Route 69, connecting the Seventh Street Trafficway in Fairfax, Kansas with Interstate 635 (Kansas–Missouri) in Riverside, Missouri. Its biggest span was 465.96 feet and it is 2552.19 feet long and had a deck width of 28.31 feet and vertical clearance of 15.02 feet. The bridge was named for the Platte Purchase.
The bridge was opened in 1957 to alleviate traffic concerns on the older (1931) Fairfax Bridge. The Platte Purchase Bridge carries northbound traffic, while the older span carries southbound traffic.
In 2013 plans were announced for replacement of both the Platte Purchase Bridge and the Fairfax Bridge. When the latter closed on October 31, 2014, the Platte Purchase span was restriped to handle two-way traffic. The Platte Purchase bridge was set for demolition in late 2016 when the new bridge opened. The first detonation occurred on the morning of Friday, December 9, 2016, and the rest of the bridge was demolished on Thursday, January 12, 2017."
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The bridge was photographed from a stop along another road beneath it. That made the bridge a "Roadside Attraction" for me. Here is a better view of the entire bridge (sometimes called the "New Fairfax Bridge) before it was demolished 6 months later: https://historicbridges.org/bridges/browser/?bridgebrowser=missouri/plattepurchase/ The link will also give you a little more history on the bridge. Plus, the link will provide an idea about how Missouri handles its historic bridges. If I knew before what-I-know-today, I would have gone out of my way to photo document a lot more of vanishing history.
My photo above was taken "just because" from the other side and an entirely different vantage point. Without going through my ancient photo archives, I don't remember if I ever took a photo of the entire bridge span like in the above link. However, I do vaguely remember taking other images of this bridge from other vantage points on other occasions. Unfortunately, I currently don't remember when or the exact images. Doing some recent reorganization of my two Photo Servers, I've been finding my servers full of surprise photos that I didn't specifically remember taking until I saw them again. However, as soon as I see an old, forgotten photo, all the memories of the day suddenly come flooding back. My Photo Servers are like a treasure cove of moments in time. Some freshly remembered; some not. The above photo was one of my older memories.
Copyrighted Image. DO NOT DOWNLOAD, copy, reproduce, or use in any way without written permission from Elizabeth Bickel.