Chad DeGroot – Christmas Day Bridge Ride

Chad DeGroot explains this one:
“We figured Xmas eve morning would be a great time, slow, and easy to film with the sun starting to come up and the fishing buddies slowly piling up with bobbers and gear while we filmed some flatland on a famous historic bridge. Brian Stump hit me up about this but we have different schedules that it was a trick to make this happen. This spot is so famous and it was awesome to finally work this out…plus the trains were flying by non stop to add some extras to the video…here is what is up with the bridge:

Lake Monroe Bridge was originally built between 1932 and 1933 as a replacement for a wooden bridge (tolled until 1926) that was manually operated. It was a Warren-Truss Swing bridge, fabricated by Ingall’s Iron Works of Birmingham, Alabama, the swing gear was manufactured by Earle Gear and Machine Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was erected by W.W. White of St. Petersburg, Florida. The contracting company for the Florida State Road Department was Kreis Contracting Company of Knoxville, Tennessee.[1]

Construction of the bridge provided economic relief to the region during the peak of the Great Depression, and the tourism it facilitated provided further relief after that period. When Interstate 4 was built in the late-1960s along with the original version of the nearby St. Johns River Veterans Memorial Bridge, it provided temporary relief for the Lake Monroe Bridge, which proved to be crucial after the opening of Walt Disney World southwest of Orlando. Unfortunately in the latter portion of the 20th Century, the bridge proved to be inadequate to handle more modern traffic. In 1994, the bridge was replaced by the Bill Benedict Bridge a much higher concrete slab bridge that has four lanes, and was built between this and a CSX Railroaddrawbridge that originally served the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. The remnants of the bridge can now be found in Lake Monroe Wayside Park along US 17-92 in Sanford, and now survives as a fishing pier and overlook…and great FLATLAND riding spot.”