Edmund Pettus Bridge

The Edmund Pettus Bridge is a bridge that carries U.S. Route 80 Business (US 80 Bus.) across the Alabama River in Selma, Alabama. Built in 1940, it is named after Edmund Winston Pettus, a former Confederate brigadier general, U.S. Senator from Alabama and Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan. The bridge is a steel through arch bridge with a central span of. There are nine large concrete arches supporting the bridge and roadway on the east side.The Edmund Pettus Bridge was the site of the conflict of Bloody Sunday on March 7, 1965, when armed policemen attacked civil rights demonstrators with billy clubs and tear gas as they were attempting to march to the Alabama state capital of Montgomery.The bridge was declared a National Historic Landmark on March 11, 2013.DesignThe bridge carries four lanes of US Route 80 over the Alabama River, from Selma on the west side, to points east. The bridge has a total of eleven spans. It has ten smaller concrete spans, while the main span in the center, over the river, is made of steel. Because Selma is built on a bluff over the river, the west side of the bridge is higher than the east side. The center of the bridge is 100feet over the river. In 2011, the bridge was listed as functionally obsolete, meaning that it doesn't meet current design standards for its current traffic load.