London Bridge

The bridge that crosses the Bridgewater Channel in Lake Havasu City opened over the River Thames on August 1, 1831. It was designed by the Scottish engineer John Rennie, who died before his plan was approved, and completed by his son. By the early 20th century heavy traffic was making it sink into the river, about an inch every eight years, and by the 1960s the City of London had decided to replace it.

Robert P. McCulloch, the outboard-motor manufacturer who was building Lake Havasu City from raw desert, bought it on April 18, 1968. According to Go Lake Havasu, the city's visitor bureau, he reached his bid by doubling the $1.2 million estimated cost of dismantling it and adding $60,000, a thousand dollars for each year of his age, for a total of about $2.46 million. Both McCulloch and the man who arranged the sale denied the popular story that he thought he was buying Tower Bridge.

Only the outer stone came to Arizona. The 10,276 exterior granite blocks were numbered and catalogued, many were trimmed at a quarry at Merrivale in Devon, and they were shipped through the Panama Canal to Long Beach, California, and trucked inland. The Lord Mayor of London, Sir Gilbert Inglefield, relaid the foundation stone in Arizona on September 23, 1968. The new bridge has a modern load-bearing structure faced with the old granite, which the visitor bureau says cut its weight from 130,000 tons to 30,000. It was built on dry land across the neck of the Pittsburgh Point peninsula, and the channel was dredged underneath afterwards, turning the point into an island. Shipping and assembly, with the channel, cost about $7 million, and the bridge was rededicated on October 10, 1971.

The gamble paid off: land sales rose once buyers came to see the bridge, and McCulloch recovered his costs. Today it spans 930 feet and carries cars, cyclists and pedestrians between the mainland and the island. Go Lake Havasu says the ornate lampposts were made from cannons captured from Napoleon's army after Waterloo, and that the bridge is home to hundreds of bats and thousands of swallows. It is free to walk across.