An Arizona Department of Transportation project in the remote northwest corner of the state has been honored by a national industry group, the department announced last month.
The rehabilitation project on one of several Interstate 15 bridges in the scenic Virgin River Gorge was named Project of the Year by the American Public Works Association, ADOT said in a news release. The award is for projects costing between $25 million and $75 million; the I-15 project, which was completed last year, cost $30 million.
Work on the 50-year-old Virgin River Bridge No. 6 involved replacing girders, decks and railings, along with widening the roadway, ADOT said. The roadway's location, 100 feet above the Virgin River in a narrow canyon, made the work a challenge, and specialized equipment was required. In all, crews poured 4,000 cubic yards of concrete and used nearly 4 million pounds of steel.
The work was the centerpiece of $50 million in upgrades to the 30 miles of I-15 that pass through Northwestern Arizona, ADOT said. Other work there included repaving the freeway and repairing the decks of three other bridges.
As Matt Jaffe wrote in the August 2014 issue of Arizona Highways, the Virgin River Gorge section of I-15 is one of Arizona's most scenic drives. It also was the most expensive rural section of interstate ever constructed; the river had to be rechanneled a dozen times, and eight bridges were built in a 13-mile span. "We did things in the gorge that hadn't been done anywhere else," Tuffy Ruth, who worked as a high scaler on that project, told Jaffe.