The Sunshine Skyway Bridge, officially referred to as the Bob Graham Sunshine Skyway Bridge, is a pair of long beam bridges with a central tall cable-stayed bridge. It spans Lower Tampa Bay to connect Pinellas County (St. Petersburg, Florida) to Manatee County (Terra Ceia, Florida). The current Sunshine Skyway opened in 1987 and is the second bridge of that name on the site. It was designed by the Figg & Muller Engineering Group and built by the American Bridge Company. The bridge is considered the flagship bridge of Florida and serves as a gateway to Tampa Bay. The four-lane bridge carries Interstate 275 and U.S. Route 19, passing through Pinellas County, Hillsborough County and Manatee County. It is a toll bridge, with a toll assessed on two-axle vehicles traveling in either direction at a rate of $1.75 with the state's toll by plate system or $1.16 with the state's SunPass system.
The original Sunshine Skyway was a two-lane beam bridge with a central truss bridge built directly to the west of the current structure. It was completed in 1954, and a second two-lane span opened in 1971. The original bridge was the site of two major maritime disasters in 1980, the second of which resulted in its partial destruction. The first incident was on the night of January 28, when the United States Coast Guard cutter collided with the tanker Capricorn in the western approach to the bridge, resulting in the sinking of the cutter with the loss of 23 crew members in the worst peacetime disaster in the history of the U.S. Coast Guard. The second incident came on the morning of May 9, 1980, when the freighter MV Summit Venture allided with a support pier near the center of the bridge during a squall, resulting in the catastrophic failure of the southbound roadway and the deaths of 35 people when several vehicles, including a Greyhound bus, plunged into Tampa Bay. Traffic was diverted onto the surviving two-lane span for several years until the replacement Skyway Bridge was completed, at which time the old bridge was partially demolished and converted into two long fishing piers.
The channel beneath the main span of the Skyway allows access to Port Tampa Bay, Port Tampa, the Port of St. Petersburg, and SeaPort Manatee, making it one of the busiest shipping lanes in the United States. Owing to the 1980 disaster, the current bridge incorporates numerous safety features to protect the structure from ship collisions.
History Precursors and proposals In 1924, J.G. "Jim" Foley, a realtor, and his partner Charles R. Carter joined with James E. Bussey, an attorney, to create the Bee Line Ferry Company. The service started on March 7, 1927, and originally had two ferries: Fred D. Doty and the City of Wilmington (later renamed Pinellas). The ferry crossed from the end of Bay Vista Park in St. Petersburg to Piney Point, a region north of Palmetto.
A physiotherapist from St. Petersburg named Herman Simmonds proposed building a high-level suspension bridge in 1926. Sometime during 1927, Simmonds received congressional approval and a permit from the US War Department to build a bridge, but efforts were put on hold due to the Great Depression.
In 1929, the Florida Legislature gave the Bee Line Ferry a 50-year franchise to operate a service between Pinellas and Manatee Counties. The service gradually expanded during the 1930s, and by the end of the decade, Bee Line operated four boats which departed every 30 minutes in the winter and every 45 minutes in the summer during daylight hours, weather permitting. During its last full year of operation in 1941, Bee Line carried almost 100,000 vehicles and thousands of passengers. Ferries stopped running in 1942 when many employees were called to serve and the boats were converted to military use as part of the World War II war effort. In 1944, the St. Petersburg Port Authority bought the franchise from Bee Lee and resumed ferry service, albeit on a smaller scale until the end of the war. Regular ferry service would continue until the Sunshine Skyway Bridge opened a decade later.
During the same period, several preliminary proposals were made to build a tunnel or a series of bridges across the mouth of Tampa Bay. In 1929, a bill was introduced in the Florida legislature to build a tunnel crossing lower Tampa Bay running from Pinellas Point to Piney Point, with the tunnel itself being buried under the bay and going for a length of . This proposal did not get past the early planning stages because construction costs would be high, and unspecified "Tampa officials" argued that building any bridge or tunnel would pose a navigational hazard.
Another proposal soon originated from Louis E. Saupe, head of the West Coast Bridge and Tunnel Company. This consisted of a series of short causeways running from Maximo Point to Mullet Key on the Pinellas County side, a tunnel running for less than beneath the shipping lane near the mouth of the bay, and another causeway running to Terra Ceia on the Manatee County side. State officials preliminarily approved the project in 1939, and the state legislature agreed to fund it. The project was designed to cross through a portion of Hillsborough County near the mouth of Tampa Bay. Since the county was not mentioned in legislation, the bill was declared unconstitutional, and the project stalled.
Bail, Horton, and Associates, along with Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Hogan & Macdonald, received a contract from the port authority on December 20, 1944, to design the bridge. Both firms released a report in November 1945 about the bridge. Freeman Horton of Bail, Horton and Associates proposed Snead Island as its southern terminus and 10th Street in Palmetto as the thoroughfare. Bail, Horton, and Associates was awarded the contract but as it was unable to get $10 million in revenue bonds, the state government halted the project sometime during the late 1940s. The design competition was reactivated in the early 1950s, with Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Hogan & Macdonald winning the contract this time and serving as the engineers for both design and construction. The partner-in-charge for Brinckerhoff was M. N. Quade. The successful attempt to build the bridge came after the Florida State Improvement Commission was approached with a proposal that they finance it while the State Road Department (SRD) built it. The Florida State Improvement Commission proceeded to take over the St. Petersburg Port Authority's assets, which included $520,000 seen with bonded indebtedness. A $21,250,000 bond issue was passed by the Improvement Commission, and sales started after the Port Authority's assets were acquired.
Naming the bridge On July 4, 1950, a day-long "Spans Across the Bay" festival was held in St. Petersburg to celebrate the approval of the long-awaited bridge and to announce its name. The St. Pete Junior Chamber of Commerce and the Florida State Road Department had conducted a nationwide contest to name the structure, with the rules dictating that it should not be named after a specific person or geographic place. Over 20,000 entries were submitted, and Virginia Seymore of nearby Indian Rocks Beach was announced as the winner for her submission of Sunshine Skyway.
Construction of original bridge Construction bids were accepted in July 1950 and construction began on October 19, 1950, with 544 workers. It was built by the Virginia Bridge Company and another firm that was involved doing engineering work was Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Hall and McDonald. Staging areas for the construction of the bridge were established at both crossing sites. An entire concrete factory was established near Piney Point while prefabricated concrete parts were delivered via barge from a site in Tampa where they were made. of material was dredged as part of building the causeways for the bridge. of structural steel, of rebar and of concrete were used to build the bridge.
Original bridge
The two-lane bridge opened to traffic on September 6, 1954. At the time of the bridge's opening it was among the longest bridges on Earth and it was the longest continuous bridge in the United States. Notable participants in opening ceremonies that day were: US senator and former governor Spessard Holland, former governors Charley E. Johns and Fuller Warren along with James Melton and General James Van Fleet. Delegations from ten Florida counties participated that day. On the day the original bridge opened, it was toll free from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. A reported 15,086 cars crossed the bridge on its first day.
The bridge's central span was long with a opening for a ship channel. It consisted of 32 concrete piers set every , except at the ship channel, and the bridge rose at a 5% grade. The original maximum speed limit was , and the minimum was . The lack of illumination made the bridge dark at night. The bridge was not easily accessible, however, and drivers often had to take detours to reach it. U.S. Route 19's final segment, which ended at the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, opened on July 19, 1955.
Second span
In 1969, a second two-lane span was built beside the original to ease traffic and bring the bridge up to Interstate Highway standards. On August 31, 1970, the bridge was struck by the Liberty ship , which was being towed from Mobile, Alabama to shipbreakers in Tampa, Florida. Opening of the newer span was delayed until 1971 for reinforcing the south main pier, which had cracked due to insufficient supporting pile depth. It was dedicated on May 19, 1971. Both Governor Reubin Askew and the mayor of Bradenton, B.T. Arbuckle, attended the second span's dedication. The second span was used for all southbound traffic, while the original span was converted to carry only northbound traffic.
1980 collapse
The southbound span (opened in 1971) of the original bridge was destroyed on the morning of May 9, 1980, when the freighter MV Summit Venture collided with a support column during a sudden rain squall, causing the catastrophic failure of over of the span.
Several vehicles were at the top of the bridge when almost a quarter-mile of roadway fell away beneath them, while others drove off the edge, either because the drivers did not notice the collapse in the driving rain or could not stop quickly enough in the wet conditions. In all, six cars, a truck, and a Greyhound bus plummeted into Tampa Bay, resulting in 35 deaths. A few drivers, including former Major League Baseball player Granny Hamner, were able to stop their vehicles before reaching the gap, and as seen in many photographs of the aftermath, a Buick Skylark driven by local car dealer Richard Hornbuckle skidded to a halt just two feet from the chasm.
In the water below, several small official and private boats and a transportation department diving team arrived soon after the intense but narrow squall line cleared the vicinity. However, the frantic rescue effort became a recovery operation, as only the victims' bodies were found. The only survivor of the fall was Wesley MacIntire, whose Ford Courier pickup truck had bounced off the hull of the Summit Venture and into the water. The truck sank to the shallow bottom of the bay, but MacIntire managed to escape and swim to the surface, where he was quickly pulled to safety aboard the freighter. He sued the company that owned the ship and won a $175,000 settlement in 1984 ($ today).