By Pat Hammert/Staff Writer

The spanking new bridge that a cadre of classic cars cruised Thursday morning replaced a bridge built when Herbert Hoover was president.

“I just looked over at a 1928 car in this bunch and that just happens to be the year the old bridge here was built,” said state Department of Transportation chief engineer John Fuller.

“If you look at the size of that car and the vehicles that are being driven on this road today, you realize just how narrow this old 20-foot bridge was and how badly this new facility was needed.”

Dignitaries from El Reno, the county and state attended an El Reno Chamber of Commerce ribbon cutting at the much-heralded opening of a stretch of U.S. 81, south of El Reno.

The $8.5 million project entailed four divided lanes. New parallel lanes were built and the existing two-line highway was rebuilt. Four narrow bridges were replaced along the 3.3-mile ribbon. The rest of the highway to Union City, or the south leg of just over 4 miles, will have to wait until 2007 for a construction contract, said ODOT spokesman Cole Perryman, but rights of way and moving the necessary utility lines will begin next year.

“This is a very important highway that moves trucks and goods across the country,” said state Rep. Phil Richardson at the ribbon cutting. Richardson, of Minco, said he’d “contributed” at least one outside rear-view mirror to bridge railings as he tried to avoid oncoming cars that might have drifted too far to the center.

Canadian County Commissioner Don Young said his road crew has clipped a number of exterior mirrors on county trucks as they traveled over the highway. Large trucks had to pause — or not — as oncoming traffic cleared the bridge.

“It was of game of chicken,” Young said.

Officials say the improvements were long overdue as federal funding for the work did not clear, was used elsewhere or didn’t materialize. In 1998, the entire stretch between Union City and Interstate 40 was placed on ODOT’s five-year plan by then state Sen. Bill Gustafson.

And a year later, state officials, concerned about the safety of the narrow road, authorized a quick asphalt overlay and re-striping.

That portion of the highway is the only remaining section of U.S. 81 between Texas and Kansas that is not four-laned, except for a portion of the highway south of Duncan, Perryman said.

After five years of promises from the state Department of Transportation, construction began in February 2004.
Since 1998 the estimate cost of widening the highway doubled, records show. At that time the highway from the north edge of Union City to I-40 was programmed in at $8.8 million.

Traffic research in 1998 showed that portion of U.S. 81 carried about 5,600 vehicles each day.