East Iowa Bridge Taken Down with Explosives [WATCH]

A bridge that carried countless people over the years is coming down. This weekend, explosives were used as the process continues.

The I-74 suspension bridge over the Mississippi River between Iowa and Illinois was built in the mid-1930s, with the bridge "twinned" in the late 1950s. It's impossible to estimate the number of vehicles that went over the bridge known as the Iowa-Illinois Memorial Bridge before it went out of service in December 2021. One thing's for sure. It was easily in the billions.

Today, the new I-74 bridge carries over 80,000 vehicles a day.

The old I-74 bridge is in the process of being removed. On Father's Day, Sunday, June 18, controlled explosives were used to take down the towers and suspension cables of the eastbound portion of the bridge.

While that happened on Sunday, the new I-74 bridge was temporarily closed. That was expected to last about one hour. A nearby park (Leach) and Bettendorf's riverfront trails were also closed. There was no traffic allowed on the Mississippi River itself during Sunday's work.

You can see a video of Sunday's explosive work below.

You can see live video feed of the bridge on this page. It appears there are two different cameras that show the way the bridge looks now.

The demolition of the Iowa-Illinois Memorial Bridge should be totally completed by the middle of 2024.