Here’s MSC’s first Steel Structure Trivia question of the year! The new Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge, set to open to traffic next Sunday, February 9, connects Illinois with Missouri over the Mississippi River near downtown St. Louis and will be completed just in time to celebrate the city’s 250th birthday next month. The project uses 8,000 tons of structural steel in all, fabricated by W&W/AFCO Steel (an AISC/NSBA member and AISC Certified fabricator), and when complete, it will be the third-longest cable-stayed bridge in the U.S. Your trivia question is: How did the bridge get its name? Photo: MoDOT and IDOT
Answer:
The bridge got its name as a compromise between politicians on both sides of the Mississippi River, who had different ideas for the name of the bridge. The Missouri side wanted to name the bridge after the St. Louis Cardinals’ legendary outfielder and first baseman Stan Musial, who died last year, and the Illinois side wished to honor military veterans. In the end both sides won, and this past summer the bridge was officially named the Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge (SMVMB).
Congratulations to our winners: Nathan Lang, a senior project engineer with Merrill Iron & Steel, Inc. in Schofield, Wis. (an AISC member and AISC certified fabricator); Bob Brendel, a special assignments coordinator with MoDOT; and Matthew Lombardo, a project structural engineer with McPherson Design Group in Norfolk, Va.
You can read more about the Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge project from the November 2013 issue of MSC.
And you can test your steel structure knowledge right here on our MSC website on the last Friday of each month, where a new photo will be posted to the Steel in the News section as our weekly “Steel Shot.” Your challenge is to correctly answer the trivia question provided in the news post, based on what you see in the photo. Our next question will be posted on Friday, February 28, at noon (CST).