Breaking News: late in the afternoon on Thursday, March 20, 2008, the Minnesota Department of Transportation ordered the DeSoto bridge to be closed until further notice due to the bridge being unsafe. Several gusset plates were found to be deformed and the main arch was bowed slightly, appearing to inspectors that the bridge would fail if steps were not taken to fix the bridge structure. This bridge is of the same design as the I-35W bridge that collapsed, and it was built by the same contractors.

Update: MN-DOT has announced that the MN-23 bridge problem is fatal. The bridge will be removed during the spring of 2008, and a new bridge will be built in its place.

It is not known who the first European was to see the Mississippi River. It is known that Hernando de Soto was the first European to take credit for seeing the Mississippi River on May 8, 1541. After milling around the river for about a year, de Soto caught a fever and died. He was buried in the river on May 21, 1542. The DeSoto Bridge in St. Cloud is the northern of two bridges over the Mississippi River to commemorate the de Soto discovery.

None of the early Spanish explorers treated the local indigenous Indians very well, de Soto included. Students from St. Cloud State University set up protest in the sprint of 2005 demanding that the name of the bridge be changed out of respect for the Indians. 50 students attended the protest rally.

The DeSoto bridge is the first river crossing at this location. It was built in the late 1950s as part of a new MN-23 highway alignment that acted as a bypass around downtown St. Cloud. The new MN-23 followed Division street for several miles, so the new bridge is often called the Division Street Bridge. Ironically, MN-23 diverges from Division street more than a mile before the river, where it follows 1st St S, then 2nd St S up to the river, and 3rd St SE north of the river.

The bridge itself is a steel deck truss. This is much like the big metal monster bridges on the lower Mississippi, except shorter, and turned upside-down so the metal structure is under the roadway. The main span looks like an arch, but the bridge does not gain strength from the arch. Rather, the strength is from the truss lattice work. The bridge project was started in 1957, and finished in October of 1958. It was officially dedicated September 16, 1959.

The deck truss bridge design is considered to be obsolete today. The key issue is that it is non-redundant. That is, there are key parts of the bridge that if they fail, the whole bridge can fail. This was dramatically demonstrated in August, 2007, when I-35W bridge collapsed in Minneapolis. That bridge was very similar to this bridge, but longer, wider, and newer. There is another similar deck truss bridge just up stream, the Sauk Rapids Bridge. That bridge is being replaced and is scheduled to be removed in 2008. The DeSoto bridge is also on the short list, being scheduled for replacement in 2015. That is too bad, this is neat looking bridge that seems to fill an important visual niche just where it sits. The black paint, unusual for a highway bridge, competes the illusion of being a fortress like structure left over from the middle ages.

The City of St Cloud has built a very nice park on the west end of the bridge. In fact, the city is gradually building parks and trails along the river to try to rejoin the city to the great river. This park is very well done, kudos to the city for both the vision and the execution of the plan for this park.