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[PHOTOS] City Of Eau Claire Begins Repairs On 140-Year-Old High Bridge

photos by local photographer Tina Ecker depict the process, and a new Facebook page aims to archive the historic effort

Rebecca Mennecke, photos by Tina Ecker |

Have you ever wondered how on earth the City of Eau Claire is going to repair the High Bridge? I mean, will people be swimming around with hammers, or what? How do you even fix a bridge, let alone a bridge that's over a century old? 

Thanks to local photographer Tina Ecker, you can see photos of the bridge's historic repairs throughout the entire process, through her new Facebook page called "Keeping the History Alive," dedicated to keeping everybody updated on progress of the repairs through photo documentation. 

Ecker began posting photos to the new page on July 15, showing construction crew dumping rocks into the Chippewa River in order to create a path to the bridge's soaring piers, which in late June were determined to be in need of "urgent" repairs. 

The 900-foot-long iron lattice truss bridge stands 80 feet above the normal river level. Trains once whizzed through the bridge until 1992, when it was abandoned. In 2015, it reopened as a pedestrian bridge as part of the city's extensive trail system.

The repairs to the bridge aim to stabilize and repair cracks in its limestone piers, which have caused the bridge's deck to heave. 


Check out more about the bridge's historic repairs at the Facebook page "Keeping the History Alive." And check out even more of Ecker's gorgeous photography – including scenic photos of the historic bridge – at her Facebook page

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