The Capitol Boulevard Memorial Bridge, also known as the Oregon Trail Memorial Bridge, is a historic bridge over the
Boise River
The Boise River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. , accessed May 3, 2011 tributary of the Snake River in the Northwestern United States. It drains a rugged portion of the Sawtooth Range in so ...
in
Boise
Boise ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Idaho. As of the 2020 census, there were 235,685 people residing in the city. Located on the Boise River in southwestern Idaho, it is east of the Oregon border and nor ...
,
Idaho
Idaho ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest and Mountain states, Mountain West subregions of the Western United States. It borders Montana and Wyoming to the east, Nevada and Utah to the south, and Washington (state), ...
, United States. It is listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
.
Description
The bridge is a
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...
style
deck arch bridge constructed in 1931 by
Morrison-Knudsen. Idaho state highway engineer Charles A. Kyle designed the bridge, which includes four open spandrel arches supporting a wide roadbed with four lanes of motorized traffic crossing river. Two , cantilevered sidewalks allow for pedestrian traffic.
History
Boise was established in 1863, soon after the second
Fort Boise
Fort Boise is either of two different locations in the Western United States, both in southwestern Idaho. The first was a Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) trading post near the Snake River on what is now the Oregon border (in present-day Canyon Count ...
was constructed, and its location required that
Oregon Trail
The Oregon Trail was a east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and Westward Expansion Trails, emigrant trail in North America that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon Territory. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail crossed what ...
pioneers ford the Boise River. In 1864 John McClellan and William Thompson formed the Ada Ferry Company and received a charter to operate a ferry at the crossing. McClellan and Thompson constructed a toll bridge near the site in 1868. The Ninth Street Bridge replaced McClellan and Thompson's toll bridge in 1911.
In 1914 architect
Charles W. Wayland envisioned a grand boulevard approaching the
Idaho State Capitol Building, and after the
Boise Depot was built in 1925, city planners redesignated 7th Street as Capitol Boulevard, and the Capitol Boulevard Memorial Bridge was constructed and dedicated as a memorial to Oregon Trail pioneers.
The bridge was refurbished in 1987 and restored in 2013
and was added to the National Register of Historic Places November 5, 1990.
See also
*
List of bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Idaho
*
References
External links
Road bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Idaho
Bridges completed in 1931
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