Cooper: Wilcox Boulevard railroad bridge, then and now, proves that progress takes time

Staff File Photo / Police vehicles block the intersection of Amnicola Highway and Wilcox Boulevard, at the base of the bridge over Norfolk Southern railway yards, in response to a domestic terror incident at the Naval Reserve facility on Amnicola Highway in 2015.
Staff File Photo / Police vehicles block the intersection of Amnicola Highway and Wilcox Boulevard, at the base of the bridge over Norfolk Southern railway yards, in response to a domestic terror incident at the Naval Reserve facility on Amnicola Highway in 2015.

The wheels of progress don't always turn as fast as we would like them to, but at least they turn.

Take the Wilcox Boulevard bridge over the Norfolk Southern railroad yards, for example. For some time, it has been off limits to emergency vehicles and freight trucks, causing delays in response and delivery. But it will soon be replaced.

A celebration of a $25 million federal grant that will help spur the $60-plus million replacement of the bridge was held on the span Friday.

The bridge itself is another example of the speed of progress.

Eighty-five years ago, in 1937, it was proposed by the Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission as part of what the Chattanooga Free Press termed an "ambitious road building" project.

Not only would Wilcox Boulevard be extended over the railroad yards to meet what was then called Riverside Drive (now Amnicola Highway), but Wilcox Boulevard would be extended east from its intersection with Old Cleveland Pike (now Shallowford Road) east toward Lovell Field (now Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport) and further to an all-new road named Chickamauga Creek Drive.

The proposal also foresaw an all-new road, South Chattanooga Drive, that intersected with U.S. 41 after it came around Lookout Mountain, fed cars through the Bachman Tubes into East Ridge and onto Ringgold Road, where it would eventually link up with the new Chickamauga Creek Drive.

Another all-new road, East Ridge Drive, would cut through the heart of what is now East Ridge and link up with Brainerd Road around what is now Spring Creek Road. Brainerd Road/Lee Highway then also would link up with Chickamauga Creek Drive as it headed toward Chickamauga Dam, then under construction.

Chickamauga Creek Drive, more or less, later became Highway 153, and the interstate highway system ultimately negated the need for South Chattanooga Drive and East Ridge Drive.

A proposed link from the northern end of Chickamauga Dam, called North Drive, then would connect with Highway 27/Dayton Pike. North Drive, of course, because the extension of Highway 153 beyond the dam and does link up with Highway 27.

But the beginning of the interstate was more than 20 years in the future, Highway 153 even longer than that, and a little annoyance called World War II held up everything for a while.

The Wilcox Boulevard bridge, though, did get built sooner than the freeways.

A news release from the city this week that announced plans for the replacement bridge called the span 70 years old, but it was still in the planning stages 68 years ago.

A Chattanooga News-Free Press article on March 18, 1954, announced that Southern Railway System had agreed to build the viaduct, and the city would pay for building out Wilcox Boulevard from Dodson Avenue to the bridge.

No cost was given for the price of the bridge, but the cost of the road, depending on its width, was estimated between $347,420 and $383,940.

A Chattanooga News-Free Press article 68 years ago today said city commissioners were going to have to determine if they wanted Wilcox Boulevard, as it approached the bridge, to be 70, 80 or 92 feet in width.

The road, which would be paid for entirely by the city because it was not part of a state or federal highway system, "will provide a new route into the downtown section from East Chattanooga and Avondale," the article said.

The span opened in 1956.

Although Southern Railway paid for the bridge, the cost of the replacement bridge will be borne by, among others things, the federal Rebuilding Infrastructure with Sustainability & Equity (RAISE) grant, $10 million from Norfolk Southern, $5 million apiece from the city and the Tennessee Department of Transportation, and $2 million from the Chattanooga-Hamilton County/North Georgia Transportation Planning Organization.

The prohibition of freight and emergency vehicles over 13 tons on the bridge began in 2021, quickening the need for a replacement, according to a spokeswoman for Mayor Tim Kelly.

Construction on the replacement bridge is slated to start in 2025, and completion is expected to be in 2028 or 2029.

So, the Wilcox Boulevard bridge over the railroad took nearly 20 years from conception in 1937 to completion, and now the new one is still six or seven years away. The road over the dam conceived in the same "ambitious road building" project wasn't opened until 1954. The interstate highway system around Chattanooga, which precluded the need for some of the roads seen in 1937, was finished in 1966. The suggested Chickamauga Creek Drive, which became Highway 153, was completed from the interstate to Chickamauga Dam in the mid-1960s, and the suggested North Drive (Highway 153 all the way to Highway 27) wasn't wrapped up until late in the 20th century.

Progress takes time.

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