Transportation

Watch Portland Move an Entire Bridge in One Day

The shifting of the 3,400-ton span is rumored to be the biggest bridge move in history.

When moving a 1,100-foot-long bridge to a different location without taking it apart, you need a few things. There's the painfully cautious planning process, veteran work crews and heavy machinery, obviously. But you also want lots of dishwashing liquid – Dawn detergent works well, if you can rustle up a few barrels of it.

Dish soap is invaluable when it comes to sliding a 3,400-ton span from its old supports onto new ones, as engineers in Portland demonstrated this Saturday while moving the Sellwood Bridge. Over the course of 14 hours, specialists from heavy-lifting company Omega Morgan used hydraulic jacks to push the Sellwood's primary section as much as 66 feet to the side, proceeding at a glacial pace of 6 feet per hour. Unlike a certain other bridge project, this one went off without a hitch, and the slightly nudged Sellwood should reopen to traffic this week.