Stretching 1,415 feet across the wild and beautiful Conagree River and connecting downtown Columbia, SC to West Columbia, The Gervais Street Bridge is easily one of Columbia's most recognizable landmarks. There are ruins all along the river of bridges that came before, some were burned too slow the encroachment of Sherman's troops and some washed away by past floods.
The Gervais Street Bridge as we know it today opened in June of 1928 and was added to the National Registry of Historic Places in 1980.
A reinforced concrete, arched bridge, The Gervais Street Bridge at the time it was built was the widest roadway in the state of South Carolina and remained the only bridge across the Congaree River until 1953. While the bridge herself has not change much since 1928, the city around her certainly has and she even plays host to an annual dinner that is served right on the bridge itself, which is of course shut down for the dinner.
The Gervais Street Bridge is easily explored and photographed from the Cayce River Walk in West Columbia, SC.