Deer Isle Bridge - Deer Isle ME

City:: Deer Isle, Little Deer Isle, Sedgwick, ME
Site Type:: Infrastructure and Utilities, Roads, Bridges, and Tunnels
New Deal Agencies:: Public Works Funding, Public Works Administration (PWA)
Started:: 1937
Completed:: 1939
Contractors:: Merritt-chapman and Scott Corporation, The Phoenix Bridge Company
Quality of Information:: Very Good
Marked:: Yes
Site Survival:: Extant

Description

Deer Isle Bridge, a.k.a. the Deer Isle-Sedgwick Bridge, is a two-lane suspension bridge in Hancock County, Maine constructed with federal Public Works Administration (PWA) funds between 1937 and 1939. The bridge connects Little Deer Isle with a point in the Town of Sedgwick. The bridge bears a 1939 Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works plaque.

Short and Stanley-Brown:

This toll bridge crosses Eggemoggin Reach and connects Deer Isle with the mainland. It is about 25 miles southeast of Belfast by road and about the same distance southwest of Ellsworth. It replaces a ferry communication which was antiquated and dangerous in stormy weather.

The bridge is of the high-level suspension type with a main span of 1,080 feet and two side spans of 484 feet each. Its total length, exclusive of the fill approaches, is 2,509 feet of nearly half a mile.

The roadway is 20 feet wide and attains an elevation of 98.7 feet above mean high water where it crosses the 200-foot channel. The roadway has a 15-inch timber emergency walk supported on the steel roadway curb. Work was begun on the substructure in January 1937. The project was completed in August 1939 at an estimated construction cost of $834,668 and a project cost of $970,208.

Source notes

C.W. Short and R. Stanley-Brown. Public Buildings: A Survey of Architecture of Projects Constructed by Federal and Other Governmental Bodies Between the Years 1933 and 1939 with the Assistance of the Public Works Administration. Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1939.

Site originally submitted by Evan Kalish on July 6, 2024.