Big Four Bridge – Louisville, KY
Some bridges you drive across without a second thought. The Big Four you park and walk under first, because what stops you isn’t the span over the river, it’s the enormous elliptical ramp that curls up out of the lawn at Waterfront Park and loops a quarter mile into the air before it ever reaches the old railroad deck. Standing beneath it, it feels less like a walkway and more like a piece of sculpture you happen to be allowed to climb.
The bridge itself dates to 1895, built to carry the Big Four Railroad (properly the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway) across the Ohio between Louisville and Jeffersonville, Indiana. The trains stopped in 1969, and soon after, the approach spans were sold for scrap, which left the truss marooned midriver for decades as the locals’ beloved “Bridge That Went Nowhere.” The comeback took until February 2013, when the Louisville ramp opened and turned the stranded span into a footbridge. Jeffersonville finished its own ramp in 2014, and the walk finally reconnected the two states.
It’s free, it’s open around the clock, and once the ramp has done the climbing for you it’s a flat, easy stroll. Walk the whole thing and you’ve covered about two miles round trip, the river underfoot and downtown Louisville at your back; walk half and you can say you popped over to Indiana. The best time to come is dusk. From twilight until 1 a.m. the whole span lights up, and if the night is yours, the city will set it to a color of your choosing for a small fee.
