BEACON – Happy birthday to the eastbound span of the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge. It was officially opened on November 1, 1980.
The twin-span bridge is the busiest of all five bridges across the Hudson River operated by the New York State Bridge Authority.
The first span of the bridge was opened on November 2, 1963. It cost $19.5 million to build; the newer span cost $93.6 million to construct.
In 1997, the twin spans were ceremonially renamed the “Hamilton Fish Newburgh-Beacon Bridge” in honor of Hamilton Fish, who served as New York governor, US senator and US Secretary of State, and for the five generations of the Fish family who represented the Hudson Valley in Congress, the state legislature and the Presidential Cabinet from the Lincoln administration through the 1990s.
The new span and reconstruction of the first were financed primarily by the federal government as part of the Interstate Highway Fund. Ninety percent of the cost was funded with federal money, leaving the Bridge Authority to finance just 10 percent.
The anniversary of the opening of the eastbound, or south span, came just a couple of weeks after the completion of a three-year project that saw its complete re-decking at a cost of $3 million. That is expected to last 50 years.
Light weekend traffic on the just re-decked east span
