Demolition of the 83-year-old bridge that carried Alabama Highway over Town Creek, north of the DeKalb County community of Geraldine, began July 30, 2025, after a more modern span across the deep ravine opened earlier in the month.
The newly-built structure provides motorists with a longer, wider and taller bridge that includes shoulders and corrects the steep vertical curves on both approaches to improve safety, the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) noted in a news release.
Once it was completed, crews shifted vehicle traffic to the new bridge, built by Miller and Miller General Contractors in Huntsville at a cost of $13.7 million.
When the work began in October 2023 to build the new structure, included among the contractor's first tasks were boring and casting eight drilled shafts to form a stable foundation and installing 32 massive steel girders to support the bridge deck.
At 715-ft.-long, 38-ft.-6-in.-wide and 75-ft.-high, the new bridge is substantially longer, wider and taller than the original span, first constructed in 1942.
On the first day of the older structure's demolition, a concrete removal subcontractor began the process by cutting into the roadway bridge. It will be removed piece by piece so as to limit disturbing the creek below, according to ALDOT.
The state agency anticipates that its razing of the older structure and removal of the old bits of roadway on either side of it will be completed this fall, bringing an end to the Ala. 75 bridge replacement.
