This rusty plate girder bridge over Interstate 75 southbound in Lockland, Ohio, appeared ordinary at first glance, but it dated to 1906 when it carried the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railway (Big Four) across the Miami & Erie Canal and Mill Creek. Built by the King Bridge Company, it stood over a corridor that had been central to the village since the canal first cut through Lockland in 1827. The waterway functioned until 1929, after which the corridor remained largely dormant until transportation planners began considering a limited-access highway between Cincinnati and Dayton in the 1930s.
That planning accelerated in 1941 with a proposal for a 3.5-mile defense-related freeway to serve the new Wright Aeronautical Company plant in Lockland. The route followed the former canal and included four lanes from Paddock Road to Shepherd Lane and six lanes north to Glendale-Milford Road. Funded largely through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the project featured 12-foot lanes, a narrow median, and red oxide concrete on acceleration lanes. Work paused later that year when the WPA halted funding for landscaping and utility relocations, but local and state officials agreed to share those costs, allowing construction to continue.
The Wright Highway opened in 1942 and soon proved successful enough to warrant extensions north and south. A southern extension, begun in 1947 and opened in stages by 1950, required raising and reusing the 1906 plate girder bridge to span the new automobile traffic rather than the abandoned canal.
Additional plans for a regional expressway advanced slowly until the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 provided consistent funding. By 1963, new northbound lanes and reconstructed southbound lanes through Lockland met interstate standards, and the corridor was designated Interstate 75.
Today, the old Big Four bridge remains in daily use by Norfolk Southern, carrying trains across a corridor that has changed repeatedly since the canal era. As part of a major reconstruction of Interstate 75 between the Ohio River and Interstate 275, the Ohio Department of Transportation plans to unify the split lanes through Lockland and provide four lanes in each direction within the current southbound alignment. The work, scheduled for 2027 to 2035, will require replacing the 1906 bridge and will bring an end to a structure that has served the corridor for nearly 120 years.
