Seven Mile Bridge

Seven Mile Bridge
Location of the Seven Mile Bridge
Carries	2 lanes of US 1
Crosses	Moser Channel
Locale	Florida Keys, Monroe County, Florida
Maintained by	Florida Department of Transportation
ID number	900101
Design	precast segmented box girder bridge
Total length	10887.5 meters (6.765 miles)
Width	11.58 meters (38 ft)
Longest span	41.15 meters (135 ft)
Clearance below	19.81 meter (65 ft)
Opened	May 24, 1982
Coordinates	24.6982°N 81.1767°W / 24.6982; -81.1767

The Seven Mile Bridge is a famous bridge in the Florida Keys, in Monroe County, Florida, United States. It connects Knight's Key (part of the city of Marathon, Florida) in the Middle Keys to Little Duck Key in the Lower Keys. Among the longest bridges in existence when it was built, it is one of the many bridges on US 1 in the Keys, where the road is called the Overseas Highway.

There are two bridges in this location. The older bridge, originally known as the Knights Key-Pigeon Key-Moser Channel-Pacet Channel Bridge, was constructed from 1909-1912 under the direction of Henry Flagler as part of the Florida East Coast Railway's Key West Extension, also known as the Overseas Railroad.

History

Old Seven Mile Bridge, with ramp on the left connecting it to Pigeon Key

This bridge was badly damaged by the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, and subsequently refurbished by the United States Federal Government as an automobile highway bridge. It had a swing span that opened to allow passage of boat traffic, near where the bridge crosses Pigeon Key, a small island where a work camp for Flagler's railroad was located. Hurricane Donna in 1960 caused further damage.

The current road bridge was constructed from 1978 to 1982. The vast majority of the original bridge still exists, used as fishing piers and access to Pigeon Key, but the swing span over the Moser Channel of the Intracoastal Waterway has been removed.

Engineering

The full span of the Seven Mile Bridge as seen from the east shore of Ohio Key. The arc over Moser Channel can be seen to the right and Knight's Key can be seen to the extreme right.

The new bridge is a box-girder structure built from precast, prestressed concrete sections, comprising 440 spans. Near the center, the bridge rises in an arc to provide 65-foot (20 m)-high clearance for boat passage. The remainder of the bridge is considerably closer to the water surface. The new bridge does not cross Pigeon Key.

The total length of the new bridge is actually 35,862 ft (10,931 m) or 6.79 miles (10.93 km), and is shorter than the original. Each April the bridge is closed for approximately 2.5 hours on a Saturday and a "fun run," known as the Seven Mile Bridge Run, of 1,500 runners is held commemorating the Florida Keys bridge rebuilding project. The event began in 1982 to commemorate the completion of a federally funded bridge building program that replaced spans that oil tycoon Henry Flagler constructed in the early 1900s to serve as a foundation for his Overseas Railroad.

The Seven Mile Bridge was engineered by Figg & Muller Engineers. The structure was completed six months ahead of schedule and has earned eight awards, including an Exceptional Award for Cost Savings Innovation from the Federal Highway Administration.

In popular culture

In film and television

The spectacular bridge has attracted many filmmakers. Its film 'credits' include scenes in True Lies, 2 Fast 2 Furious, the James Bond film Licence to Kill, CrissCross, and Up Close & Personal.

In True Lies, filmed in the early 1990s, a section of the old bridge is shown being destroyed by missile strikes. The missiles were edited in, and the explosions were done on an 80-foot (24 m) model of the bridge, but filming was done on the actual bridge, and the "destroyed" section is the former swing span, which had been removed upon completion of the new bridge.

The bridge also appears in a Life After People: The Series episode, collapsing in several spans 100 years after the disappearance of people.

The finale of season 18 (2011) of the The Amazing Race reality TV series was a tricycle race across the old bridge.

On the Top Gear TV series, the presenters conducted a race in the Florida keys between a performance car, a speed boat, and a sea plane. The car raced across the Seven Mile Bridge.

In gaming

In the remake of the videogame Spy Hunter, the bridge features prominently in level 12, and is destroyed.

In music

David Allan Coe sings about the bridge in his song titled "Seven Mile Bridge".

References

• Structurae: Seven Mile Bridge
• FIGG Seven Mile Bridge

External links

• Knight's Key Bridge (1912) at Structurae
• Pigeon Key Bridge (1912) at Structurae
• Moser Channel Bridge (1912) at Structurae
• Pacet Channel Viaduct (1912) at Structurae
• Seven Mile Bridge (1982) at Structurae

Gallery

• 

  View from the arc over Moser Channel, looking northeast towards Knight's Key (Marathon). Tiny Pigeon Key can be seen on the left, between the old and new bridges.

• 

  View of the new bridge from the old bridge.

• 

  View of Seven Mile Bridge.