By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
Fifty years ago, Ernestine Massey and her family joined hundreds of other Sitkans at the ribbon-cutting ceremony opening the John W. O’Connell Memorial Bridge.
“We just went as a family,” she said. “It was pretty confusing because there were so many people. But it was just pretty exciting because we had watched it being built for the last few years. We were crowded up together, waiting for the ribbon cutting, and it finally happened.”
The Alaska Chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Sitka Historical Society and Sitka Rotary Club will observe the 50th anniversary of the 1972 bridge dedication Sunday with a ceremony marking the designation of the bridge as an Alaska Civil Engineering Landmark.
The ceremony will take place at 2 p.m. Sunday at the town side bridge entrance.
Speakers include members of the ASCE, Sitka Historical Society board members Massey and John Stein, Sitka Historical Society and Museum curator Nicole Fiorino, and a representative of the Rotary Club. At the end of the event, a new plaque installed by the Rotary Club will be unveiled. Fiorino said some of the speakers will share memories, and she plans to talk about the history of the shore boats that took passengers between Japonski Island and town before the bridge opened.
William Gute, the Department of Transportation engineer in charge of design and plan preparation for the bridge, was named Outstanding Engineer of the Year in 1972, and in 2006 the AAA recognized it as one of “Seven Remarkable Bridges” of the West for its aesthetics and historical significance.
David Gamez, a civil engineer and past president of the ASCE-Alaska Section, said O’Connell Bridge is historic for several reasons.
“The vehicular cable-stayed bridge was the first of its kind in Alaska, and among the earliest of its kind in the United States,” Gamez said. “The only similar ones were built in Europe.”
Before the bridge was built, shore boats ferried passengers across the channel between town and Japonski Island. Construction of the airport on Japonski in 1966 added momentum for building the bridge, Gamez said.
“A planning study was completed to figure out the most cost-effective way to connect the communities (Sitka and Mt. Edgecumbe) by installing a bridge,” he said. “A few were considered but a cable-stayed bridge turned out to be the most cost-effective and aesthetically pleasing.”
Planning and design started in 1969 and the bridge was dedicated August 19, 1972.
The bridge is 1,250 feet long, and 450 feet at the longest span. Among the factors making the project difficult was the “high seismicity of Alaska, challenging climactic considerations, close proximity to the airport on Japonski Island, the considerable ocean traffic, and the unique need for aesthetics because of the proximity to a National Historic Landmark known as Castle Hill.”
John Stein had lived in Sitka previously but wasn’t here when the bridge opened. At the ceremony Sunday he will speak about what went into designing the bridge, including concerns about preserving the view from Castle Hill.
“Attention was given to how it would appear,” Stein said. “They picked a color to not detract from the view, and they were cautious about parking.”
In his research, Stein was pleased to find his father, Thomas Reber Stein, is named in the state historical report before construction started.
A photo from the dedication shows Sitka Mayor John Dapcevich, Gov. Bill Egan and Claudia O’Connell on the bridge, next to the dedication plaque. Claudia O’Connell was the widow of former Mayor John O’Connell, for whom the bridge was named.
The opening of the bridge that sunny August day was such a big event that Massey said it would be days before she, her husband Walt Massey, and five kids ages 6 to 17, would try to drive across.
“There were so many people trying to do it, it took so many days before we could get into the traffic line,” Massey said.
It was a welcome milestone for the many Sitkans who commuted on the shore boats. Massey remembers taking them to play rehearsals on Mt. Edgecumbe.
The bridge allowed for expansion of economic development and services on the Japonski side. Sitka’s first airport had already been built by the time the bridge opened, and the island also was the location of the Public Health Service Mt. Edgecumbe Hospital, Mt. Edgecumbe High School and the U.S. Coast Guard dock. All of those facilities have been expanded over the half century since the bridge opened and they have been joined by the Sitka campus of the University of Alaska Southeast. An estimated 4,000 vehicles now cross the bridge daily.
The bridge bears John O’Connell’s name because he was a long advocate for its construction.
Others on the design team were design squad chief Roy Peratrovich Jr.; Dennis Nottingham, design check and final structural analysis; and Fred Kohls, highway departments computer section. Associated Engineers and Contractors was the construction contractor. Robert Beardsley was commissioner of highways at the start and was succeeded by Bruce Campbell in 1971.
The Alaska Chapter of the ASCE said one of the lasting results of the bridge and its design is that “cable-stayed bridges are now in every engineer’s toolbox and are being built throughout the U.S., commonly replacing other outdated bridges.”
