NM 4 over Rio Grande, San Ildefonso, New Mexico. County/parish: Santa Fe.
Added to the National Register of Historic Places July 15, 1997. NRIS 97000730.
Part of Historic Highway Bridges of New Mexico MPS (NRIS 64500416).
1 contributing structure.Also known as:
The Otowi Suspension Bridge, spanning the Rio Grande River near San Ildefonso, New Mexico, is a wooden single-lane suspension bridge for road traffic, built in 1924. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.
In its 1996 NRHP nomination, it is asserted to be significant in the areas of transportation and engineering. It was important for having opened a large part of New Mexico to automobile traffic, including Bandelier National Monument, the Pajarito Plateau, the townsite of Los Alamos and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which became nationally important during World War II. It was also the only public highway suspension bridge in the state and was the best-rated bridge in the state in a 1987 survey.
The bridge was closed to vehicular traffic when a two-lane steel through truss bridge was opened in Spring 1948 just north of it. The steel bridge, with its 290-foot (88 m) length, was the longest road span in New Mexico at the time. In turn, it has since been replaced with a four-lane concrete deck bridge.
Now a pedestrian bridge, it was a contributing property in the listing of the Otowi Historic District to the National Register in 1975.
(read more...)National Park Service documentation: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/77846812