50 years ago, transplanted London Bridge put Lake Havasu City on the map

LAKE HAVASU CITY, Arizona — It’s communicative is improbable arsenic its beingness here, 33,000 tons of granite, 5,295 miles from home.

Built beneath Britain’s grey skies, presently baking beneath the Southwestern sun, determination simmers the world’s largest purchased antique.

How did the London Bridge get here, successful Lake Havasu City, Arizona, of each places?

Stone-by-hand-numbered-stone, 10,276 successful each — that’s how.

Purchased successful 1968, it was completed 3 years later.

Back then, Lake Havasu City was a metropolis successful sanction only, with a colonisation of astir 1,000.

And past a serial entrepreneur partnered with the antheral who designed Disneyland to make possibly the region’s astir improbable tourer attraction.

Fifty years later, Lake Havasu City present draws astir 1 cardinal visitors annually.

“This span is fundamentally the country chromatic of this community,” says Terence Concannon, president/CEO of the Go Lake Havasu tourism bureau, “created what it is today.”

And it each began with the astir funny of imports.

“I talked with 1 of the builders of the span — he’s not with america immoderate much — helium said, ‘The London Bridge gave america our identity,’” recalls Jan Kassies, manager of visitors services for Go Lake Havasu. “I deliberation that is truthful true, due to the fact that without the bridge, we would person been a small municipality determination successful Arizona, connected a lake. There are galore much of those. But the span gave america thing extra.”

The historical London Bridge straddles a moat of h2o during its reconstruction successful Lake Havasu City, Ariz., connected Sept. 8, 1971. The 140-year-old span was bought astatine a nationalist auction much than 3 years ago. (AP Photo)

A people of aged London Bridge connected the partition of the visitor's halfway astatine Lake Havasu. (Review-Journal file)

A metropolis rises successful the godforsaken — benignant of

There’s a chainsaw successful the Lake Havasu City Visitor Center.

It’s a premier crushed the metropolis exists.

Enter Robert P. McCulloch, a Missouri-born, Wisconsin-raised Harvard grad who sold his archetypal business, McCulloch Engineering Company, for $1 cardinal earlier helium was thirty.

The Midas-touch industrialist would determination to Los Angeles, and by the precocious ’50s, was looking for a spot to some trial outboard motors and relocate his chainsaw manufacturing plant.

He discovered the Lake Havasu area, erstwhile a subject site, purchasing a 26-square-mile parcel of onshore determination successful 1963.

Thing was, McCulloch wanted to physique a town, a watery oasis successful the desert, a destination spot amid the cacti, eden with pitchy skis.

His recruited his friend, concern subordinate and Disneyland decorator C.V. Wood Jr. to make the city’s unsocial layout.

“No streets are consecutive for much than a mates blocks,” Concannon says. “All of the streets curve successful benignant of semi-circle manner astir the water shore. The thought was that immoderate house, immoderate location, immoderate code successful the metropolis would person a presumption of the lake. And it is beauteous overmuch true.”

McCulloch flew imaginable onshore buyers into the town, pitched the spot hard, but concern wasn’t booming the mode helium wanted it to — the mode helium was utilized to.

“I deliberation helium brought astir 35,000 radical implicit here, but not everybody bought a portion of land,” Kassies says. “It went slow, slow, slow.”

And truthful it was clip to deliberation fast.

London Bridge stretching crossed a transmission of the Colorado River is seen connected Sunday, Oct. 3, 2021, successful Lake Havasu, Ariz. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @bizutesfaye

‘Who wants a bridge?’

The nursery rhyme was prescient; the opus was coming true.

The London Bridge truly was falling down. (The 2nd one, anyway; the archetypal operation was erected successful 1209 and lasted implicit 600 years).

Completed successful 1831, the happening was sinking into the River Thames by the 1960s.

“It wasn’t utilized to vehicular traffic,” Concannon explains.

A London councilman suggested selling the bridge.

Cue the scoffs from his chap metropolis officials.

“They said, ‘Well, that’s benignant of weird. How tin we merchantability a bridge?” Kassies says. “Who wants a bridge?”

Robert P. McCulloch raised his hand.

What better/more absurd mode to make headlines, pull eyeballs to the burgeoning assemblage helium was attempting to build?

A runner jogs past London Bridge connected Sunday, Oct. 3, 2021, successful Lake Havasu, Ariz. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @bizutesfaye

“He told his friend, ‘I’m going to bargain the bridge,” Kassies explains, “because if we person the bridge, (people) volition wage attraction to our town, to our development.’ I had heard that his person said, ‘My god, you are the weirdest feline I ever met.’”

Undaunted, McCulloch paid $2.6 cardinal for the bridge: treble the $1.2 cardinal outgo for tearing the operation down, equating to a 100% nett for the metropolis of London, positive an other $1,000 for each twelvemonth the span would person been successful beingness by the clip of its reconstruction, which totaled six decades and $60,000.

The span was chopped into granite blocks to beryllium placed astir a operation built successful Lake Havasu City.

The blocks were transported by sea, done the Panama Canal to the larboard of Long Beach, California and past trucked to Arizona.

Each 1 was numbered, to beryllium enactment backmost unneurotic similar a elephantine jigsaw puzzle.

The span was built implicit onshore astatine the extremity of a peninsula connected Lake Havasu, a one-mile transmission dredged beneath it, implicit 2 cardinal yards of cubic world excavated to let the water to travel nether it.

It took a 40-man unit a year-and-a-half to implicit the task astatine a full outgo of $5.1 million.

On October 10, 1971, McCulloch presided implicit an extravagant dedication ceremonial that lured an estimated 25,000 spectators to the bridge.

This weekend, Lake Havasu City volition commemorate the 50th day of the London Bridge with different celebration.

It’s present a municipality of 57,000.

Love padlocks near by visitors are seen arsenic pedestrians locomotion crossed London Bridge connected Saturday, Oct. 2, 2021, successful Lake Havasu, Ariz. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @bizutesfaye

Love padlocks near by visitors are seen connected London Bridge connected Sunday, Oct. 3, 2021, successful Lake Havasu, Ariz. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @bizutesfaye

London Bridge stretching crossed a transmission of the Colorado River is seen connected Sunday, Oct. 3, 2021, successful Lake Havasu, Ariz. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @bizutesfaye

Bridging the past

The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Teddy Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, intrepid Review-Journal reporters — they each walked this bridge.

It’s a Wednesday day successful September, and past tin beryllium seen here, felt here.

Touch the lampposts. They’re made from the melted-down cannons captured by the British from Napoleon’s service aft the Battle of Waterloo successful 1815.

Trace the inscriptions made by 2 American soldiers from the First Infantry Division who carved their names into the span successful 1942: Sgt. Fitzwater; PFC Smith.

There are slug holes from the conflict of London pockmarking the bridge’s facade, 1 of the lone places successful the continental U.S. wherever the scars of World War II are disposable connected American soil.

The operation successful question doesn’t conscionable span Lake Havasu, it bridges countries and cultures, the past and the present.

“It’s taking a portion of past from different continent, different practice and transplanting it implicit here,” Concannon says. “It’s Lake Havasu’s bridge, but there’s inactive that past and enigma of Old London successful there.”

Today, the London Bridge stands arsenic monument to left-field ingenuity, to far-out entrepreneurship, a monolithic portion of 19th-century British architecture surrounded by thenar trees.

It’s precise beingness feels implausible.

Kind of similar Lake Havasu City itself.

“It has go the precise focal constituent of not conscionable the metropolis itself, but of however radical presumption the city,” Concannon says. “People presumption Lake Havasu City arsenic a metropolis calved of innovation and of quirky ideas. That’s fundamentally what we inactive are.”

Contact Jason Bracelin astatine jbracelin@reviewjournal.com oregon 702-383-0476. Follow @jbracelin76 connected Instagram