A Foggy Night

After taking a few pictures at the Baring Cross Bridge, I hopped back in the car and drove over to Riverfront Park to get more pictures before the fog dissipated. This was on a Friday night, and it was surprising to see people out and about, walking to the bars along Clinton Avenue. Even with vaccines, it's still strange to see people in groups (most everyone was masked when walking around, at least).

I walked over to The Belvedere, which provided this view of the fog and the Main Street Bridge.



The Belvedere was built in 1986 in commemoration of the sesquicentennial of Arkansas' statehood. I'm assuming that the building was named after the 80s TV show Mr. Belvedere.



The current Main Street Bridge was built in 1973, which was then significantly altered in 1998 due to construction on the expanded Statehouse Convention Center. But the first Main Street crossing was built in 1897 and was then known as "The Free Bridge." That bridge was demolished in 1924 to make way for a newer bridge, which would then be demolished for the current bridge in the 1970s.



From there I walked over to the Junction Bridge, which is an old rail bridge that has been coverted into a busy pedestrian bridge. The first Junction Bridge was built in 1884, and was actually built right on top of the old "little rock" bluff that gave the city of Little Rock its name. Unfortunately, the bridge construction resulted in parts of the bluff being dynamited away and then unceremoniously dumped in to the river (historic preservation wasn't really a thing back in the 1800s). The bridge was rebuilt in the 1970s in order to allow for changes in river traffic after the completion of the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System. Rail traffic on the bridge ceased altogether in the 1990s, and after years of sitting idle the bridge was finally converted into a pedestrian bridge in 2008.