The bridge that became an absolute necessity after 9/11

Touted as a civil engineering marvel before construction even began, the immense Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge hangs about 90 stories above the Colorado River, overlooking the storied Hoover Dam.

There was a time when the most viable artery connecting Southern Nevada to neighboring Arizona — for cars and big rigs alike — consisted of a scenic drive atop the dam despite longstanding safety-related debates and elevated traffic volumes.

The 9/11 attacks thousands of miles away immediately shifted those fears. Hoover Dam could be targeted next, the thought went, possibly with trucks carrying explosives.

Concerns were reminiscent of World War II theories about bad actors wanting to sabotage the dam, UNLV history professor Michael Green told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. One remaining pillbox at the dam serves as a reminder of that era.

“So it was not a shock to think, in the wake of 9/11, that there were concerns about something that could happen to the dam,” he said. “At that point, all of us were a bit panicked for understandable reasons, and a lot of wild rumors and ideas spread.”

Added Green: “Happily they turned out to be just rumors.”

Amid the panic and uncertainty that fateful 2001 morning, authorities quickly shut down access to the dam. Security checkpoints were in place when it reopened a few days later, but commercial vehicles never were allowed to travel that road.

They wouldn’t cross the Colorado River at Black Canyon until the $240 million bridge was inaugurated in 2010.

That meant that for nine years, more than 2,000 commercial-truck drivers a day had to take a 23-mile detour through Laughlin. Consumer losses totaled about $30 million a year.

While plans to build a bypass and financial commitments from Nevada, Arizona and the federal government preceded the attacks, it can be argued that they accelerated its construction.

“The bridge was under discussion for quite some time before 9/11,” Green noted. “But 9/11 may very well have, shall we say, sped the process.”

The late-Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., was more succinct at an event marking the project’s progress in 2004, the year before construction kicked off.

“The push that got us here is homeland security,” Reid said. “That’s why we’re here.”

Lobbying for resources after the tragedy

Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley was serving in Congress the day four passenger airliners barreled into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a rural field in Pennsylvania.

The first plane had crashed in New York City when she arrived at her Cannon Building office in D.C. for a meeting about gaming, a forte of hers as a U.S. representative from Las Vegas.

“In most congressional offices, you have your television on 24/7,” she told the Review-Journal. “We were talking about internet gaming, and the longer we talked — I’m talking a matter of minutes — we kept looking over at the TV. And after a while, we were no longer talking about internet gaming.”

Berkley recalled learning about the plane that hit the Pentagon earlier than most because one of her staffers had reported seeing the low-flying aircraft headed there.

“This nation is under attack,” her then-chief of staff announced before Capitol police evacuated the building. Discussions about vulnerable Southern Nevada infrastructure like the Hoover Dam and military bases began almost immediately, Berkley said.

“It was boiling down to resources,” she added.

In the aftermath of 9/11, Nevada officials were left to explain how susceptible the valley was to a possible terrorist attack, she said. “We were demonstrating very early on that we had tremendous vulnerabilities, and we needed federal support to protect ourselves.”

Las Vegas lost Palo Verde High School teacher Barbara Edwards in one of the planes, and it was later revealed that some of the 9/11 perpetrators had spent time in the city, making the need to harden soft targets in Nevada a personal endeavor, Berkley said.

“I remember having a conversation with one of the undersecretaries telling me that there might be resources available, but Las Vegas would have to earn their way on the list,” she said. “And I was so appalled by that.”

Berkley couldn’t recall whether the attacks sped up the memorial bridge process.

“I don’t know if it was just … moving along at usual snail’s pace of government, or when the funding was finally allocated, or whether it was accelerated because of the tragedy of 9/11,” she said. “But whatever it was, it’s an important structure and an important collaboration between Arizona and Nevada.”

‘Best known’ construction project in the U.S.

The neighboring states and the Federal Highway Administration had set off to tackle traffic jams at Hoover Dam’s two-lane road long before the attacks, according to the Nevada Department of Transportation.

“Although the attacks of 9/11 brought the potential vulnerability of Hoover Dam into focus, NDOT had made the construction of a bridge to bypass the dam a priority some years ago,” the agency wrote in the early 2000s.

The federal agency approved an environmental impact statement that cemented the bridge’s location in March 2001, months before 9/11 and after about a decade of work.

“While this is being built, it will be the best-known construction project in the United States,” said Tom Stephens in 2003 when he was NDOT’s director.

Scott Rawlins, former deputy director and chief engineer for NDOT, oversaw the project from its early process to completion. The bridge is maintained by the Silver State, according to the Arizona Department of Transportation.

Rawlins, now an independent infrastructure adviser with his own firm, recently told the Review-Journal that the interagency collaboration was crucial.

“Everyone kind of pulled together, and worked together as a team,” he said.

Rawlins reiterated that the undertaking already was moving forward before terrorists targeted the U.S., adding that Reid and other Nevada and Arizona members of Congress probably helped accelerate the $100 million funding the federal government contributed.

The states equally contributed $40 million and issued another $130 million in bonds and interest.

Namesakes were combat veterans

The four-lane, 1,900-foot Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge — which comprises seven smaller bridges — is positioned 1,500 feet downstream from the Hoover Dam.

About 300 engineers and roughly 1,200 construction workers embarked on putting it together, including its 1,060-foot concrete arch. A crane collapse officials blamed on the wind delayed the project in 2006. Construction worker Sherman Jones was killed at the job site two years later.

At the time of its completion, it was deemed the fourth longest bridge in the world and the longest concrete, single-arch bridge in the continent.

It was named around the 2004 anniversary of 9/11 as the Senate considered the transportation spending bill that eventually funded it.

Former Nevada Gov. Mike O’Callaghan, a Marine Corps Korean War veteran had died earlier that year. He also had been the executive editor of the Las Vegas Sun newspaper.

Pat Tillman was a former Arizona Cardinals star who joined the Army Rangers after the terrorist attacks. He died in 2004 after a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan.

Reid and former U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., initially wanted then-Arizona U.S. Sen. John McCain as a namesake. McCain, a Navy veteran who was a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, declined the offer. The late senator suggested Tillman’s name instead.

“Pat Tillman was the kind of guy that O’Callaghan would have liked,” Reid said at the time about his close friend. “They were two very, very courageous men.”

9/11 impacts in Las Vegas

Green said he admires the bridge’s look and the purpose it serves, even when it hasn’t truly entered the national consciousness as other major infrastructure projects like the Golden Gate Bridge. He said he typically goes out of the way to drive through it when he visits Hoover Dam.

Terror threats from Al Qaeda, which was responsible for 9/11, or any other network, never materialized in Southern Nevada.

“The day that terrorized Las Vegas was 9/12, when the town emptied and planes weren’t flying in,” Green said. “It had a significant impact here: not just because of the loss of life … but also the loss of jobs, the economic realities that hit at that time, and obviously the fear the Muslim community suffered for the actions of people who President George W. Bush was quick to say did not reflect the entire community.”