Talk:Rio Grande Gorge Bridge

More info on the Bridge Construction

Hi there, in doing some research on this bridge's construction, it looks like an overhead cable system was built. With that in place, ironworkers used the overhead cable system to bring out the material and concrete for the Farmington and Taos side footings and piers. With the aid of falsework (temporary structures built up from the ground) between the rim edge and concrete piers on the Farmington side, the overhead cable brought out the steel to make the half arch from the pier to the rim. Once that was done, the center half arch was completed on that side. With the Farmington side of the bridge complete, the same construction sequence was used to build the Taos side of the bridge. Fall prevention netting was used throughout. The above is based on a few images on the NMDOT Facebook page and a 60 second YouTube film of the construction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2RhBgIdIVQ . The film clip shows the pier foundations, the Farmington side completed and the Taos side under construction, then the concrete deck is being poured. I'll see if there are newspaper articles to support this. Those of you who have a watch on this page, please let me know if you have any heartburn with this update. Thank YOU RRFWTommartin (talk) 23:59, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Cantilever truss bridge - No

Not a cantilever truss bridge. It is a steel arch bridge.
Cantilever bridges have large superstructures up above the roadway, but arch bridges do not have to (though they can). See the New River Gorge Bridge for another steel arch bridge.
For a cantilever bridge, see the one across the St. Lawrence River in Montreal, Quebec.
98.67.96.230 (talk) 17:51, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Article has issues, please take a minute to fix this

For some reason I just can't fix it and edit here properly. The first problem is the broken link to bridges by height in the U.S., and the second is a link that's not in the right place. Thanks, Shalom11111 (talk) 02:22, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Bridges by height in the U.S works fine for me (Mac/Firefox). Which link is misplaced? --Pete Tillman (talk) 15:37, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Interesting, that's weird. I see it as tenth highest bridge in the United States, but in the way you see it when you edit the page, for some reason it works alright here.. (and I view this on my chormebook and iphone). And in the Awards section there's a badly placed link that says: "... See: http://www.aisc.org/contentNSBA.aspx?id=21368". Shalom11111 (talk) 02:32, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Think I got them all fixed now.... --Pete Tillman (talk) 03:46, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Alright. What seemed to fix it was the replacement of the word "tenth" by "seventh". Well that's odd. Shalom11111 (talk) 00:26, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

It was actually some stray wikicode -- but now the 7tn is wrong, since we're accepting the lower 172-m height. I'll fix later, Pete Tillman (talk) 23:58, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Height of the bridge?

We presently give an unsourced height of 660 ft., but Highest Bridges gives a height of 565 ft, which is stated by the author to be his laser-rangefinder measurement. That author writes "Most sources have it between 600 feet (183 mtrs) and 700 feet (213 mtrs) high when the true height is 565 feet (172 mtrs) from road deck level to the normal surface level of the river." I couldn't find an official height figure and am inclined to go with the 565 ft measurement, cited as noted. Comments? --Pete Tillman (talk) 04:27, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Good point, I just checked what you said. The article actually does give this source, which states the height is 565 ft (172 m) too, so I agree that we should go with that one. Ironically enough, I was there a week ago and estimated the bridge's height at no more than 170m, when I saw here to my surprise that I was wrong. The variety in measurements from different sources might be due to the constant change in the water surface level.. Anyway I'm fixing it now. Shalom11111 (talk) 00:20, 13 July 2013 (UTC)