The Rio Grande Gorge Bridge: Six Hundred Fifty Feet Above the River

Eight miles west of Taos on US Route Sixty-Four, the highway approaches what appears to be the edge of the world. The Rio Grande Gorge is almost invisible until you are upon it, the plateau is so flat and the canyon so abrupt that drivers who do not know to expect it arrive at the bridge railing with a start. Below, about six hundred feet down, the Rio Grande glitters in a basalt slot it has been cutting for the past one and a half million years.

The bridge was conceived in the early nineteen sixties as a critical link on Route Sixty-Four and as an alternative to the slow, winding descent into the gorge and back out. Civil engineer Herman Tachau designed the structure with project engineer Peter Bray under the supervision of the New Mexico State Highway Department. The American Bridge Company fabricated the steel; Albuquerque contractor J. H. Ryan and Sons built it. Construction ran from July of nineteen sixty-three to September of nineteen sixty-five.

On September tenth, nineteen sixty-five, Governor Jack Campbell cut a ceremonial ribbon at the eastern end before an audience of approximately four thousand people. The total cost was a little over two million dollars, a bargain that became apparent the following year when the American Institute of Steel Construction awarded the bridge its prize for the most beautiful steel bridge in the long-span category.

The Rio Grande Gorge Bridge is a steel deck arch, the arch sits below the roadway, supporting it from underneath, which gives the bridge its clean profile when seen from a distance. The total span is twelve hundred and eighty feet. The arch itself clears the river by nearly the height of a fifty-story building.

At the center of the bridge, where the protective railing is only four feet high, the drop below is precise and total. The gorge has been the site of repeated tragedy over the decades. Crisis phones installed on the bridge connect directly to counselors. The view from the walkway remains one of the most astonishing perspectives in New Mexico.