Bridge to Nowhere
Chamberlain, South Dakota
2026
If you look closely you can see that these old bridge pilings don’t go all the way across the Missouri River at Lake Francis Case in Chamberlain, in fact not even half way across. That’s because the bridge was built in 1925, before the dam that formed Lake Francis Case was built. Once the dam went up the spans from this old bridge were moved downstream onto new pilings, as well as were spans from another bridge further down river, to form a new bridge that does span the lake (with the help of a rather long causeway built from the west side of the river).
In kind of a weird way this reminds me of those trees that you can see in El Dorado Lake when taking the turnpike northeast of Wichita. I believe that reservoir was filled in the 70s and a number of those dead trees are still standing in the water 50 years later. I’m guessing those “trees” at Lake Franklin Case which have a 50 year head start will last even longer than the El Dorado trees.
Quake Lake in Montana was formed in 1959 and a great many of the trees there that were flooded and died are still standing. But yeah, concrete “trees” will likely outlast them.