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Information About

Mark Twain Memorial Bridge




  carries I-72 and US 36
  crosses Mississippi River
  locale Hannibal, Missouri
  open 2000


The Mark Twain Memorial Bridge is a bridge over the Mississippi River at Hannibal, Missouri , childhood home of Mark Twain , for whom the bridge is named. The current bridge, north of the original site, was finished in 2000 and the original bridge destroyed. It currently carries traffic for Interstate 72 and U.S. Highway 36 . The state of Missouri has put up a stone picture of Twain on the Missouri side of the bridge.

THE ORIGINAL BRIDGE

The original bridge (also called the Mark Twain Memorial Bridge) was opened in 1936 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and entered Missouri at the foot of Cardiff Hill which appeared in Twain's books The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn . A crosswalk crossed the highway, connecting the Twain boyhood home with the lighthouse at the top of the hill. It originally carried only US 36 (and at an earlier time, U.S. Highway 61 ), but with the extension of Interstate 72 west across Missouri, a new bridge was needed and was built to the north of the original bridge.

  structure Bridges
  place Mississippi River
  bridge Mark Twain Memorial Bridge
  bridge Signs
  upstream Wabash Bridge
  downstream Champ Clark Bridge