The Wabasha Street Bridge built in 1998 replaced an earlier structure that was built in 1889. The new bridge is actually two bridges, one for northbound and one for southbound traffic. The use of a concrete segmental box girder bridge provided a construction advantage because no falsework needed to be built beneath the bridge.
Pedestrian walkways run along the outside of the bridge.The new bridge, built with pedestrians in mind features 11-foot-wide sidewalks, six overlooks at the pier locations, and a stairway down to Raspberry Island. There is a gap of 8.7 feet between the southbound bridge and the northbound bridge. Last summer a guy jumped over the inner railing, on the side not designated for pedestrians, thinking a landing was on the other side. Instead, he fell 55 feet, landed on Raspberry Island underneath the bridge and lived to tell about it.
The previous bridge was an iron cantilever deck-truss bridge, which was an advanced engineering feat at the time. That bridge was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. Unfortunately, that bridge had increasing problems with repair and maintenance and after a crack team of city engineers assessed the condition of the old bridge, the decision was made to replace the bridge.
