Sunday, January 29, 2012

Baluarte Bridge



"The Baluarte Bicentennial Bridge, uniting the states of Durango and Sinaloa with a gravity-defying ribbon of concrete 1,321 feet above the Baluarte River. Completed this month, it is the highest bridge in the Western Hemisphere, the second-highest in the world and highest structure of its kind (cable-stayed bridge) on the planet.

So high is the Baluarte’s road deck that the Eiffel Tower could fit beneath it, or two Washington Monuments stacked end to end. With its long white cables and graceful towers rising 587 feet at opposite ends of the precipice, it may be the most breathtaking structure built in Mexico since the pyramids went up at Teotihuacan circa A.D. 100. "
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“The best way to fight crime and eliminate poverty is to create jobs,” said Francisco Gutierrez, the top economic development official for the state of Durango. “This is the most important project in all of Mexico right now.”
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"When the first surveyors and engineers reached the bridge site five years ago, it was a four-hour ride on horseback. “We stood at the edge of the canyon and looked across, and it didn’t seem possible,” said engineer Carlos Zamundio"

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