Seven Mile Bridge

The full span of the Seven Mile Bridge as seen from the east shore of Ohio Key. The arc over Moser Channel can be seen to the right and Knight's Key can be seen to the extreme right.

Seven Mile Bridge
Location of the Seven Mile Bridge
Carries	2 lanes of US 1
Crosses	Moser Channel
Locale	Florida Keys
Maintained by	Florida Department of Transportation
ID number	900101
Design	precast segmented box girder bridge
Total length	10887.5 meters (6.765 miles)
Width	11.58 meters (38 ft)
Longest span	41.15 meters (135 ft)
Clearance below	19.81 meter (65 ft)
Opened	May 24, 1982
Coordinates	24°41′48″N 81°10′12″W / 24.696666°N -81.17°E / 24.696666; -81.17Coordinates: 24°41′48″N 81°10′12″W / 24.696666°N -81.17°E / 24.696666; -81.17

The Seven Mile Bridge, is a famous bridge in the Florida Keys, in Monroe County, Florida, United States. It runs over a channel between the Gulf of Mexico and the Florida Strait, connecting Knight's Key (part of the city of Marathon, Florida) in the Middle Keys to Little Duck Key in the Lower Keys. Among the longest bridges in existence when it was built, it is one of the many bridges on US 1 in the Keys, where the road is called the Overseas Highway.

There are two bridges in this location. The older bridge, originally known as the Knights Key-Pigeon Key-Moser Channel-Pacet Channel Bridge, was constructed from 1909-1912 under the direction of Henry Flagler as part of the Florida East Coast Railway's Key West Extension, also known as the Overseas Railroad.

This bridge was badly damaged by the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, and subsequently refurbished by the United States Federal Government as an automobile highway bridge. It had a swing span that opened to allow passage of boat traffic, near where the bridge crosses Pigeon Key, a small island where a work camp for Flagler's railroad was located. Hurricane Donna in 1960 caused further damage.

The current road bridge was constructed from 1978 to 1982. The vast majority of the original bridge still exists, used as fishing piers and access to Pigeon Key, but the swing span over the Moser Channel of the Intracoastal Waterway has been removed.

The new bridge is a box-girder structure built from precast, prestressed concrete sections, comprising 440 spans. Near the center, the bridge rises in an arc to provide 65-foot (20 m)-high clearance for boat passage. The remainder of the bridge is considerably closer to the water surface. The new bridge does not cross Pigeon Key.

The total length of the new bridge is actually 35,862 ft (10,931 m) or 6.79 miles (10.93 km), shorter than the original.

The spectacular bridge has attracted many film makers. Its film 'credits' include scenes in True Lies, 2 Fast 2 Furious, the James Bond film Licence to Kill, CrissCross, and Up Close & Personal. In True Lies, filmed in the early 1990s, a section of the old bridge is shown being destroyed by missile strikes. The missiles were edited in, and the explosions were done on an 80-foot (24 m) model of the bridge, but filming was done on the actual bridge, and the "destroyed" section is the former swing span, which had been removed upon completion of the new bridge.

Each April the bridge is closed for approximately 2.5 hours on a Saturday and a "fun run," known as the Seven Mile Bridge Run, of 1,500 runners is held commemorating the Florida Keys bridge rebuilding project. The event began in 1982 to commemorate the completion of a federally funded bridge building program that replaced spans that oil tycoon Henry Flagler constructed in the early 1900s to serve as a foundation for his Overseas Railroad.

In popular culture

• The bridge appears in a Life After People: The Series episode, collapsing in several spans 100 years after people.

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External links

• Knight's Key Bridge (1912) in the Structurae database
• Pigeon Key Bridge (1912) in the Structurae database
• Moser Channel Bridge (1912) in the Structurae database
• Pacet Channel Viaduct (1912) in the Structurae database
• Seven Mile Bridge (1982) in the Structurae database

Gallery

View from the arc over Moser Channel, looking northeast towards Knight's Key (Marathon). Tiny Pigeon Key can be seen on the left, between the old and new bridges.

View of the new bridge from the old bridge.

View of seven mile bridge.