Great River Bridge (West)

The Great River Bridges are a pair of bridges carrying US-202/MA-10 over the Westfield River. Both bridges are camelback Warren through trusses of an unusual type. They are two span continuous trusses that are designed to look like a single span bridge.

The West Structure was built from 1938 to 1939 after a flood destroyed the previous 1880 bridge. By 1970, this bridge had become a bottleneck point which figurately split the city. However, construction on a new bridge was not started until 2007 and finished in 2009. The new bridge was designed to look similar to the historic bridge, although it uses modern details. During this construction, new sidewalks, lights, and pavement was added to the area, and a small park was built between the bridges. This project converted the original bridge (now the West Structure) to carry the southbound traffic, while the new bridge (the East Structure), carries the northbound traffic.

The original bridge was closed and rehabilitated in 2010. During this project, it was found that the deterioration was much worse than anticipated. This added an additional year and several million dollars to the project. The deterioration required the project to be halted while new designs were done and approved. The primary concern was that the cross beam was not sufficient to carry future traffic.