McAlpine Locks, off 27th Street in Portland
Few locals besides fishermen and locks and dam employees have crossed this beautiful high-lift fixed-span bridge, which rises 75 feet over the Portland Canal, but you really ought to. Structurally, it's a simple concrete beam bridge with a half-dozen support piers, but its aesthetic appeal — owing to a trio of faux- suspension towers, bookending abutments and elegant aluminum trim — is not to be denied. With curving, sloping approach roads on either end, the bridge's two-lane roadbed covers 2,050 feet in all, lighted at night by 35 or so faux- gaslight fixtures. Up top, you're higher than the traffic whizzing by on I-64, and the view upriver is of Louisville's skyline at a particularly gorgeous angle. — Jack Welch
7.12 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE [59]
Photo by Gail Kamenish
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