Plans are being developed for replacement of the historic one-lane bridge spanning Medicine Creek near Bath Lake in Medicine Park. The bridge – which was built in 1906, a year before statehood – has a wooden deck and its load-bearing capacity is limited to 5 tons.
The state Transportation Commission recently approved a $708,423 contract with Poe & Associates of Oklahoma City to prepare preliminary engineering and construction plans for the project.
The new structure will be two lanes wide and “roughly the same length” as it is now “because there is not much wiggle room at that location,” Kalie Eldridge, a public information officer with the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, told Southwest Ledger.
Poe & Associates “is doing the design, and we will have a 15% ‘Plan in Hand’ with all stakeholders to look at conceptual alternatives and determine the best path forward from there,” Eldridge said.
“We have been in constant communication with the community,” she said. “Residents signed a petition stating their support of the project and participated in the initial scoping. We will continue to include them as the project moves forward,” Eldridge said.
The replacement project won’t occur “for several years,” she told the Ledger. Because the bridge has historic significance, “environmental issues alone will entail a long process.”