On Saturday October 1, I finally tackled a project I had been thinking about for some time. I wanted to fly around some of my favorite bridges that crossed the Ohio River between Indiana and Kentucky. The video below is a compilation of all of the bridges i visited on Saturday October 1.

Lewis and Clark bridge
The Lewis and Clark Bridge is a bridge that crosses the Ohio River northeast of downtown Louisville, Kentucky and is part of a ring road around the Louisville metropolitan area, connecting two previously disjointed segments of Interstate 265. It was known as the East End Bridge for 30 years since its conception and while under construction, and renamed by Indiana officials on the day of its opening, December 18, 2016. The bridge provides for walking and bicycling. For motor vehicles, tolling began on December 30, 2016.

The Big Four Bridge
The Big Four Bridge is a six-span former railroad truss bridge that crosses the Ohio River, connecting Louisville, Kentucky, and Jeffersonville, Indiana. It was completed in 1895, updated in 1929, taken out of rail service in 1968, and converted to bicycle and pedestrian use in 2014. The largest single span is 547 feet (167 m), with the entire bridge spanning 2,525 feet (770 m). It took its name from the defunct Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway, which was nicknamed the “Big Four Railroad”.
Access to the Big Four Bridge is limited to pedestrian and bicycle use. A pedestrian ramp on the Kentucky side was opened on February 7, 2013. The original approaches that carried rail traffic onto the main spans were first removed in 1974-1975, earning the Big Four Bridge the nickname “Bridge That Goes Nowhere”.

Abraham Lincoln/John F Kennedy memorial bridges
The Abraham Lincoln Bridge opened on December 6, 2015, and is parallel to the John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge upstream and carries six lanes of northbound I-65 traffic. Both spans opened, with six lanes of traffic in each direction, in December 2016. Tolling on both spans began on December 30, 2016.

The 14th st Drawbridge
The Fourteenth Street Bridge, also known as the Ohio Falls Bridge, Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge, Conrail Railroad Bridge or Louisville and Indiana (L&I) Bridge, is a truss drawbridge that spans the Ohio River, between Louisville, Kentucky and Clarksville, Indiana.
Built by the Louisville Bridge Company and completed in 1870, the bridge was operated for many years by the Pennsylvania Railroad, giving the company its only access to Kentucky. Ownership of the railroad and the bridge passed on to Penn Central and later Conrail, which then sold the line from Louisville to Indianapolis, Indiana to the Louisville and Indiana Railroad, the current bridge owner.
The draw portion of the bridge is a vertical-lift span, built in about 1918 in place of a swing span. The towers and machinery of the lift span were designed by Waddell and Son, Inc., and there is a plaque on the SW tower reading, “Waddell Vertical Lift Bridge, Waddell and Son, 1917”. The draw span is across the upstream end of the Louisville and Portland Canal, which includes the McAlpine Locks and Dam. Ohio River traffic passes through this canal to navigate past the Falls of the Ohio.

Sherman Minton Bridge
The New Albany bridge was given to Hazelet & Erdal, of Louisville to design in 1956. Construction began in June 1959. The lower deck was dedicated and opened on December 22, 1961, by Indiana Governor Matthew Welsh and Kentucky Governor Bert T. Combs. It was built at a cost of $14.8 million. At the time it was dedicated, it was named the Louisville-New Albany Bridge. New Albany Mayor C. Pralle Erni suggested to Indiana State Senator Clifford H. Maschmeyer of Clarksville to name the new bridge for the former United States Senator and Supreme Court justice Sherman Minton. The American Institute of Steel Construction in 1961 named it the most beautiful long-span bridge of the year.

William H Natcher bridge
The William H. Natcher Bridge is a cable-stayed bridge that carries U.S. Highway 231 over the Ohio River. The bridge connects Owensboro, Kentucky to Rockport, Indiana and opened on October 21, 2002. It is named in honor of William Huston Natcher, a former United States Representative who served Kentucky’s 2nd Congressional District from 1954 until his death in 1994. The bridge project was named for Natcher only three months before his death. The William H. Natcher Bridge is 4,505 feet (1,373 m) in length (including its approaches) and 67 feet (20 m) wide. It is supported by cables connected to two identical diamond-shaped towers, each 374 feet (114 m) tall. At the time of its construction, it was the United States’ longest cable-supported bridge over an inland waterway.

The Glover Cary Bridge, also known as the Owensboro bridge
The Owensboro Bridge is a continuous truss bridge that spans the Ohio River between Owensboro, Kentucky and Spencer County, Indiana. Dedicated to the memory of the late U.S. Congressman Glover H. Cary (1885–1936) and often called the “Glover Cary Bridge,” the bridge opened to traffic in September 1940. It originally was a toll bridge, but tolls were discontinued in 1954.