Historic Bridges of Colorado highlights 23 preservation-priority bridges identified through Colorado Preservation, Inc.’s Endangered Places Program and the Colorado Department of Transportation. These bridges represent Colorado’s transportation history, engineering innovation, and long-term preservation planning for historic bridge resources.
Historic Bridges of Colorado highlights a statewide preservation effort focused on some of Colorado’s most significant historic bridges. Identified through Colorado Preservation, Inc.’s Endangered Places Program in partnership with the Colorado Department of Transportation, these bridges represent the engineering, transportation, and community history of a state shaped by mountains, plains, semi-arid landscapes, rivers, canyons, and streams.
Bridges are among the most visible and technically complex features of Colorado’s historic transportation network. They helped make settlement, commerce, mining, agriculture, tourism, and regional travel possible by connecting communities across difficult terrain. From early timber crossings and steel trusses to concrete arches, rigid frames, riveted girders, steel culverts, and postwar highway structures, Colorado’s bridges reflect changing materials, construction methods, transportation needs, and engineering standards.
The earliest historic bridges of Colorado were often temporary timber structures built to meet immediate transportation needs. As communities grew and wagon roads, railroads, and later automobile highways expanded across the state, more permanent bridge types were introduced. Steel trusses became important for longer river crossings in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while concrete bridges gained prominence as state and county governments invested in more durable road systems.
By the early twentieth century, Colorado’s bridge construction increasingly reflected the rise of professional engineering, standardized highway design, and broader public investment in roads and infrastructure. Mining districts needed reliable crossings to move ore, equipment, and supplies. Agricultural communities depended on bridges to connect farms, markets, county seats, and rail lines. Mountain highways required structures capable of spanning steep canyons, fast-moving rivers, and difficult terrain.
During the New Deal era, Works Progress Administration projects combined practical infrastructure improvements with Rustic design, stone craftsmanship, and public employment. After World War II, new bridge technologies supported heavier traffic, larger highways, and the development of Colorado’s Interstate system. Together, these structures help tell the story of how transportation shaped the state’s growth and how engineering adapted to Colorado’s varied landscapes.
The National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form for Highway Bridges in Colorado established a statewide framework for identifying and evaluating significant historic bridges. The documentation recognizes bridges for their role in the historical and technological evolution of Colorado’s transportation system, including early railroad and local government bridge construction, state highway development, transcontinental highway routes, Depression-era public works projects, and later highway infrastructure. Many bridges documented through this framework were listed in or determined eligible for the National Register because of their importance to transportation history, engineering innovation, bridge type, construction method, or association with major periods of road and highway development in Colorado.
Despite their importance, the historic bridges of Colorado face significant preservation challenges. Many remain active transportation structures, carrying daily vehicular traffic while also requiring specialized maintenance, repair, and rehabilitation. Safety requirements, changing transportation standards, deterioration, flooding, and the cost of repair can place historic bridges at risk. Because of these pressures, Colorado has lost many historic bridges over time.
In 2021, CDOT nominated 46 high-priority, on-system historic bridges of Colorado to Colorado Preservation, Inc.’s Most Endangered Places to raise awareness of the preservation needs facing historic bridge resources statewide. These bridges represented different regions, construction dates, engineering types, and transportation contexts across Colorado.
Following additional study, CDOT identified 23 bridges as preservation priorities for potential long-term preservation and individual management plans. These historic bridges of Colorado represent the evolution of bridge-building technology within the state from the 1920s through the 1970s and include concrete arches, concrete slabs, concrete rigid frames, riveted girders, steel trusses, steel rigid frames, steel arch culverts, timber stringers, welded girders, and other bridge types. Together, they provide an important cross-section of Colorado’s historic bridge heritage.
Part of CDOT’s plan for long-term preservation is the development of individual management plans for priority historic bridges. These plans are intended to guide future repair, rehabilitation, and maintenance decisions so that significant bridges can continue to serve the state’s transportation needs while retaining the character-defining features that make them important. As of 2026, CDOT has completed five individual management plans.
Priority Historic Bridges of Colorado
The following 23 bridges have been identified as preservation priorities for potential long-term preservation and individual management plans. Click each bridge name below to visit its individual page and learn more about its history, engineering significance, National Register status, and preservation needs.
Genesee Park Interchange — Jefferson County, US 40
North St. Vrain Creek Bridge — Boulder County, SH 7
Boulder Creek Bridge — Boulder County, SH 119
West Plum Bush Creek Bridge — Washington County, US 36
Plum Bush Creek Bridge — Washington County, US 36
Colorado River Bridge (1945, De Beque area) — Mesa County, US 6
Spring Creek Bridge — Kit Carson County, US 24
Rabbit Valley Interchange — Mesa County, CR L.60, Rabbit Valley Road
Grand Avenue Bridge — Mesa County, SH 340
Colorado River Bridge (1949, Grand Junction) — Mesa County, US 6
Arkansas River Bridge (1937) — Chaffee County, US 24
Rouch Gulch Bridge — Fremont County, US 50
Bear Creek Bridge — Fremont County, SH 120
SH 120 Bridge — Fremont County, SH 120
Arkansas River Bridge (1958) — Pueblo County, I-25
Huerfano Bridge — Pueblo County, US 50
Missouri Creek Bridge — Huerfano County, SH 69
Maitland Arroyo Bridge — Huerfano County, SH 69
San Juan River Bridge — Montezuma County, US 160
Rito Seco Creek Culvert — Costilla County, SH 142
Purgatoire River Bridge — Las Animas County, SH 12
Zaracillo Canyon Bridge — Las Animas County, SH 12
Burro Canyon Bridge — Las Animas County, SH 12
Preservation Outlook
The Historic Bridges of Colorado listing reflects a major step toward proactive bridge preservation in Colorado. Instead of waiting until deterioration or replacement projects force difficult decisions, CDOT’s management-plan approach is intended to identify preservation needs, repair strategies, maintenance priorities, and estimated costs in advance. This planning gives Colorado a stronger opportunity to retain significant examples of its bridge-building history while continuing to meet modern transportation needs.
Through the partnership between CDOT and Colorado Preservation, Inc., these historic bridges of Colorado are gaining greater recognition as historic resources that are both functional and meaningful. They continue to carry travelers across rivers, creeks, arroyos, highways, and canyons while also telling the story of Colorado’s engineering innovation, public works investment, transportation networks, and regional development.
Preserving these historic bridges of Colorado ensures that future generations can continue to experience an important part of the state’s built environment. Each bridge represents more than a crossing. Together, they document how Colorado communities, engineers, and transportation agencies responded to geography, growth, changing technology, and the continuing need to connect people and places.
Additional resources on Colorado highways and railroads are provided for readers interested in broader transportation history and the larger networks that shaped the development of historic bridge crossings across the state.