Kings Highway Bridge was located on the Nansemond River in the independent city of Suffolk, Virginia, United States. Built in 1928, it carried traffic on the Kings Highway, also known as State Route 125, for over 75 years.
The drawbridge was deemed unsafe and closed to traffic in March 2005 by the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT). In March 2007, VDOT announced that the bridge would be demolished and removed, and that the agency has no plans to replace it. The bridge was removed later in the year. In 2008, several boats struck debris from the old bridge.
About 3,300 motorists a day used the bridge that connected Chuckatuck and Driver. Now, they face detours of as much as 19 miles. The cost of a new bridge for the King's Highway crossing is estimated at $48 million, far more than could be recovered through collection of tolls at that location.
Famous quotes containing the words kings, highway and/or bridge:
“It breaks his heart that kings must murder still,
That all his hours of travail here for men
Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace
That he may sleep upon his hill again?”
—Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931)
“The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practised, is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good.... God, Nature, the wise, the world, preach man, exhort him both by word and deed to the study of himself.”
—Pierre Charron (1541–1603)
“It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O, my soul.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)