11 Most Endangered

Stillwater Bridge

Year Listed: 1997
Location: Stillwater , Minnesota
Current Status: Saved
Threat: Poor Public Policy

The Stillwater Bridge lifting, circa 1998.

Credit: The National Trust for Historic Preservation

Significance

Spanning the St. Croix River, the Stillwater Bridge is one of the three remaining vertical-lift highway bridges built in Minnesota and Wisconsin prior to World War II. The 1931 Stillwater span is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is considered a significant cultural resource of the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway -- a unit of the National Park System. But growth and increased traffic beginning in the 1990s led to calls for an additional bridge crossing. The National Park Service stated then that the historic bridge must be removed if a new bridge is built, citing its policy to keep the number of bridges in the Scenic Riverway constant.

Updates

The 11 Most listing in 1997 was critical to draw attention to an important historic resource and stop a new bridge project that would likely have resulted in demolition of the historic bridge. Six years later, a new process was initiated by FHWA and the WI and MN DOTs bringing 30+ stakeholders together over a two year period in a series of facilitated meetings to find a satisfactory way a new bridge could be built. The result was a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) that provides for long term preservation, maintenance, operations and use of the historic lift bridge as a part of a scenic river trails system, and a new high profile bridge crossing down stream. Under the MOA preservation of the historic bridge is assured by the establishment of the Stillwater Lift Bridge Advisory Commission with representation of all interested historical groups, staffed by the Minnesota DOT, to oversee a rehabilitation of the historic bridge to address years of deferred maintenance that was reaching the critical stage, and the development of a Management Plan for the bridge.

The Management Plan was completed in 2009 and rehabilitation work is expected to be underway the same year. The MOA also calls for an appropriation of $3M as a mitigative component of funding for the new span, to be set aside in an endowment, the yield of which will support long term maintenance and seasonal operations of the bridge. Lastly, the MOA provides for funding for interpretive signage to be incorporated into the river bicycle and pedestrian trails loop the bridge will now serve.