Sarah Mildred Long Bridge

The Sarah Mildred Long Bridge was a lift bridge that carried the US 1 Bypass over the Piscataqua River between Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Kittery, Maine. A double-deck truss bridge, it carried the US 1 Bypass road deck above and a railroad bed below.The bridge featured two separate movable spans, the central auto-bearing main lift and a retractable bridge for rail traffic near the Kittery shore. When not in use, the rail span lifted up and retracted south atop its own tracks inside the trusswork. The main span lifted on an as-needed basis for ocean-going commercial traffic, and on a varying set schedule for recreational craft unable to pass beneath the rail span, which was left in an open position by default to accommodate small boats and minimize interruption of auto traffic caused by raising the lift.Construction of a replacement bridge began in January 2015, scheduled to open to traffic in September 2017. The Sarah Long was originally set to close in November 2016, but a mechanical problem that would have cost $1 million to repair moved this up to August 21, 2016.HistoryThe Sarah Long bridge was the third span to carry motor vehicle traffic between Maine and New Hampshire at Portsmouth, replacing a river crossing at its location dating from 1822. The bridge was the direct result of the work of the Maine-New Hampshire Interstate Bridge Authority, which had been formed in 1937. The major goal of the bridge project was to relieve congestion in downtown Portsmouth and Kittery, where US 1 crossed the river via the Memorial Bridge, which had opened in 1923. The Sarah Long was completed in 1940, a decade and a half before the United States embarked on construction of an ambitious Interstate Highway System.