This is the location of the old Bloomington Ferry Bridge. The old bridge carried CSAH-18 over the Minnesota River. That bridge was closed when the new Bloomington Ferry Bridge opened about a mile up stream. There was a desire to reuse the old bridge as a regional trail bridge. It was found, however, that the old bridge would require too much repair work to make it safe to reopen. As a result, it was removed in the late 1990s. A new steel girder pedestrian bridge was constructed in place of the old bridge. The new trail bridge is shown in the first two photos.

The old bridge had a sharp right hand turn and steep hill on the north end, and a long approach road on the south end that hugged the river bank. The approach road runs along the river bank in the third photo. The fourth photo shows the trail as it runs along the old highway right-of-way. The old bridge is interesting in that it was a swing bridge, and it was closed due to deterioration in 1976. The structure of that bridge was removed, and new fixed span bridge was constructed on the existing swing span piers.

The river often flooded and washed out the south approach road. The crossing would be flooded out and closed about one year out of every three. The power of the flood waters can be seen in the fifth and sixth photos, where the water lifted up an entire section of pavement, and floated it off to the side of the trail in one large piece.

The new trail bridge features spans of 90 feet, 255 feet, and 90 feet. The steel in the main span is 10 feet tall over the piers, and thins out ot be 5-1/2 feet tall over the center of the span. This is called a formed-shape girder. This is one of the longest formed-shape steel girder pedestrian bridges, and it pushed the limits of the technology when it was built.