Note—This is not the I-35W bridge that collapsed. Click here for complete coverage of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge disaster.

Prior to the Interstate Highway System being built, the key highway route into the south side of Minneapolis was US Highway 65. US-65 crossed the Minnesota River on a narrow 2-lane bridge. In the late 1950s, MN-DOT began to upgrade US-65 to a 4-lane highway in the south metro area. The 4-lane would run from MN-5 (current I-494) down to MN-13 in Burnsville along Lyndale Avenue.

As the MN-65 project was underway, Congress passed the Interstate Highway Act. As a result, the MN-65 project was recast as Interstate I-35W in the metro area. As part of the project, a large bridge would be needed to span the Minnesota River. To keep traffic moving year around, the bridge would have to be above the 100 year flood plain and span the entire flood plain. The plan that was developed was to build a long earthen causeway through the flood plain in Burnsville (on the south side of the river), then construct a nearly 1,500 foot long steel girder bridge over the main river channel. A small fill would be needed on the north side of the bridge, followed by a large cut to help reduce the grade heading over the river bluff on the north side of the river.

When this bridge was opened in 1960, I-35W extended south only as far as MN-13. Locals called this the bridge to nowhere. As the rest of I-35W in the south metro area came online throughout the 1960s, traffic picked up on I-35W. A major shopping center was developed in Burnsville, which lead to housing, light industry, and service businesses locating south of the river. By 1980, traffic jams at the I-35W bridge were becoming a serious problem.

MN-DOT began to address the traffic problems in the early 1980s. The first project was to redeck the I-35W bridge. While the bridge was having a new deck installed, the piers were made wider, and two additional lanes were installed on the bridge. This would allow for a future where the bridge would have 3 traffic lanes in each direction. However, shortly after the bridge project was completed in 1984, it was discovered that there was a sub-soil problem near the bridge approaches. This problem would prevent the new lanes from being opened to traffic.

The sub-soil problem caused the expansion problem to languish of several years. Finally, in 1990, Governor Rudy Perpich ordered MN-DOT to do an analysis of the problem in order for the legislature to get a handle on how big the problem was. The resulting study found that the problem turned out to be a minor issue. The sub-soil problem was fixed in the early 1990s. In the mid 1990s, the highway median was removed through Bloomington, and two lanes were added to the center of the highway. When these new lanes were completed, the additional lanes were opened on the bridge over the Minnesota River.

While the bridge itself is in no danger of flooding, the causeway on the south end is prone to flooding. The highway was fully under water in the 1965 flood. After being raised a few feet, the highway has not flooded since, but MN-DOT has had to build temporary dikes along the causeway on several occasions. The last of which was the 2001 flood. A row of gravel was laid down. Plastic was put down covering the gravel, and sandbags were used to keep the plastic in place.

There is a large hill on the north end of the bridge. Northbound traffic tends to slow down going up that hill, especially trucks. On the southbound side, people see the bridge in the distance as they drive down the hill, and they tend to get scared and slow down. Making the situation worse is that the bridge makes a big hump, so you cannot see traffic from one end of the bridge to the other. The result is that I-35W traffic jams often start at this bridge.

The photo above is a view of the I-35W Minnesota River Bridge from under the southwest corner of the bridge looking north. The bridge has a span over Black Dog Road, then two piers in the water near the riverbank, and several more spans over the flood plain on the north side of the river.

These two photos are the first of 3 photos showing a typical crossing of the Minnesota River using the I-35W Bridge heading south to north from Burnsville traveling to Bloomington. In the photo above, we are nearing the south end of the bridge. In the photo below, we are halfway across the river channel. This view gives an idea of the size of the large hump in the bridge as we cross the structure.

The photo above is the last of 3 photos showing a typical crossing of the I-35W Bridge heading south to north. In this photo, we are nearing the north end of the bridge, heading towards a small dip in the road prior to starting the uphill grade into Bloomington.

The photo below is the location of the old Lyndale Ave bridge prior to the Interstate bridge being built in 1960. The land has been regraded and landscaped on both sides of the river, so there is no longer any signs of the old bridge other than a smooth spot on the riverbank.