Contrary to folklore, businessman Robert McCullogh did NOT mistakenly think he was buying London's Tower Bridge when he bought London Bridge. :)
The waymark is a cut benchmark at the northern end of London Bridge as it now sits in Lake Havasu City. It is the end that formerly marked the boundary of St. Magnus the Martyr Catholic Parish when this bridge spanned the River Thames.
Today the cut benchmark without a rivet is located just to the left under the bridge name plaque on the North end of the bridge, near an Arizona historic marker and a small plaza dedicated to Mr. McCullogh.
The public can have free access to this (to us) fascinating cut benchmark from the pedestrian walking area across the bridge. Free parking is found nearby at the Little London English Village shops.
More on how this bridge came to move from downtown London to then-undeveloped resort town in the Arizona desert can be found here: (
visit link)
"A trip to see London Bridge … in Arizona
by Travis Elborough
The Observer, Saturday 2 February 2013
In 1971 Robert P McCulloch bought London Bridge and shipped it to a small desert town. But, as our writer finds, the pre-Victorian masterpiece is very much at home on the Colorado River in the heart of Mojave County
Lake Havasu City lies by the Colorado River on a 45-mile stretch of clear water amid the desert peaks of western Arizona. It is about 150 miles from Las Vegas and a seven-hour drive from Los Angeles. In summer the temperature has been known to reach 50C. The landscape is characterised by arid expanses of loamy sand, bare red rock and eroded sediment, while the local flora – cat claws, bursage and mesquite – pokes out of the dusty ground like bristles on a hog. A more unlikely setting for a 19th-century British architectural landmark can't really be imagined. And yet John Rennie's London Bridge has called Lake Havasu City home since 1971, the year of my own birth. Captivated since childhood by the story of its transplantation, I vowed to visit it.
Preparing for the trip, I was excited to read about the so-called "English Village", a mini London theme park beside the bridge. And on arriving at its south bank, bridge seekers are greeted by silver City of London griffins, a diminutive Trafalgar Square fountain attended by Lilliputian Landseer lions and a red phone box. Sadly, a British pub, once famed for serving imported Watneys Red Barrel in tankards, was boarded up and awaiting demolition, while a Routemaster bus that had long stood at the foot of the bridge, serving as an ice cream van, has been banished to a dusty breakers' yard.
If the English Village was severely depleted, London Bridge, by contrast, looked surprisingly well. Studying old postcards, it had always appeared rather dowdy to me. But freed from the confines of a smoky hugger-mugger cityscape, Rennie's neoclassical crossing seemed regal, majestic even, under a blazing midday Arizona sun. Compellingly, the stonework still bears smudges of soot and patches of graffiti – some legibly dating from the time of the Blitz. All of which rather poignantly attests to the bridge's distinguished service in the smoke. And in such intense heat, there's pleasing surreality to spying a manufacturer's casting mark at the base of a lamp that reads: "T Potter & Sons, South Moulton St W".
The bridge's fantastical journey from rain-drenched Southwark to dust-dry Mojave County began in 1967, when the Corporation of London put it up for sale. Fashioned for posterity in 130,000 tons of granite in 1831, the span was calculated to be sinking at a rate of an ?th of an inch a year by the early 1960s. Its eventual purchasers (and also the founding fathers of Lake Havasu City), Robert P McCulloch and CV Wood, are immortalised in a statue at the northern end of the bridge. McCulloch was a flamboyant millionaire oil baron and chainsaw magnate who hatched a scheme to build a new city out here in the desert in 1963. The actual idea of buying London Bridge at a cost of $2,460,000 (£1,029,400 10s 4½d old money) came from Wood, his business partner. Previously the planner behind Disneyland, Wood felt it would put the place on the map. He was proved right. Today, 50 years after it was established, the city has more than 53,000 residents. Those numbers are bolstered every winter with the arrival of seasonal retirees known as "snow birds". In turn, each spring they are replaced by thousands of college students who flock here to party on the lake. Adverts for pasties – those little fez hats for nipples worn by sorority girls – are displayed outside waterfront gift shops. As are posters for the horror movie Piranha 3D, which was filmed here in 2009.
When it comes to the tale, cherished by London cab drivers, that the Americans thought they were buying Tower Bridge, locals are dismissive. At the Lake Havasu City Visitor Bureau, Jan Kassies insists the story hailed from McCulloch himself. "He made that up. He was a jokester. He did it just to get the media attention." A Dutch retiree who emigrated here a decade ago, Kassies stresses that the lake itself was their biggest attraction. Most visitors come here to fish, swim or go jet skiing or speed-boating.
Over at the Lake Havasu Museum of History on London Bridge Road (its entrance guarded by a life-size model of a Beefeater), two of the town's oldest residents, Lyle and Stellene Matzdorff, are proud to call themselves pioneers, and remember the hardships of the early days. "That first year," Lyle recalls, "there was nothing here, and I mean nothing. Most people were living in tents. The nearest store was a 60-mile round drive." It was touch and go for a while. "But then McCulloch bought London Bridge and people started saying: 'The town is going to make it; you don't buy London Bridge for nothing.' Things picked up after that."
If London Bridge secured Lake Havasu City's future back then, it's perhaps inevitable that today it has settled into being an accepted, and slightly unremarkable, part of the furniture. Instead, all the excitement that evening at the Desert Martini bar – a Havasu institution – was being generated by a local festival, the annual lighting of Cupcake Mountain. This autumn ritual involves the illumination of a mountain on the nearby Whipple Range whose crown is periodically frosted with snow. It is an event, as one drinker puts it, "that folks in these parts all look forward to".
Newcomers and visitors, however, tend to get confused by it. "The police," Kassies tells me, "get a lot of calls about UFOs." He smiles and then adds impishly: "Well, we assume it's Cupcake Mountain, but it could be UFOs. You have to get used to seeing strange things around here – I mean, we are the home of London Bridge."
Here's the short just-the-facts version, from Wikipedia: (
visit link)
New London Bridge in the late 19th century
By the end of the 18th century, it was apparent that the old London Bridge — by then over 600 years old — needed to be replaced. It was narrow and decrepit, and blocked river traffic. In 1799, a competition for designs to replace the old bridge was held. Entrants included Thomas Telford, whose proposal of a single iron arch spanning 600 feet (180 m) was rejected as unfeasible and impractical. John Rennie won the competition with a more conventional design of five stone arches. It was built 100 feet (30 m) west (upstream) of the original site by Jolliffe and Banks of Merstham, Surrey,[23] under the supervision of Rennie's son. Work began in 1824 and the foundation stone was laid, in the southern coffer dam, on 15 June 1825.
The old bridge continued in use while the new bridge was being built, and was demolished after the latter opened in 1831. New approach roads had to be built, which cost three times as much as the bridge itself. The total costs, around £2.5 million (£198 million as of 2014), were shared by the British Government and the Corporation of London.
Rennie's bridge was 928 feet (283 m) long and 49 feet (15 m) wide, constructed from Haytor granite. The official opening took place on 1 August 1831; King William IV and Queen Adelaide attended a banquet in a pavilion erected on the bridge.
In 1896 the bridge was the busiest point in London, and one of its most congested; 8,000 pedestrians and 900 vehicles crossed every hour.It was widened by 13 feet, using granite corbels.[25] Subsequent surveys showed that the bridge was sinking an inch (about 2.5 cm) every eight years, and by 1924 the east side had sunk some three to four inches (about 9 cm) lower than the west side. The bridge would have to be removed and replaced.
Sale of Rennie's London bridge to Robert McCulloch
Main article: London Bridge (Lake Havasu City)
Rennie's "New" London Bridge rebuilt, Lake Havasu City, 2003
In 1967, the Common Council of the City of London placed the bridge on the market and began to look for potential buyers. Council member Ivan Luckin had put forward the idea of selling the bridge, and recalled: "They all thought I was completely crazy when I suggested we should sell London Bridge when it needed replacing." On 18 April 1968, Rennie's bridge was sold to an American. It was purchased by the Missourian entrepreneur Robert P. McCulloch of McCulloch Oil for US$2,460,000. The claim that McCulloch believed mistakenly that he was buying the more impressive Tower Bridge was denied by Luckin in a newspaper interview. As the bridge was taken apart, each piece was meticulously numbered. The blocks were then shipped overseas through the Panama Canal to California and trucked from Long Beach to Arizona. The bridge was reconstructed by Sundt Construction at Lake Havasu City, Arizona, and re-dedicated on 10 October 1971. The reconstruction of Rennie's London Bridge spans the Bridgewater Channel canal that leads from the Uptown area of Lake Havasu City and follows McCulloch Boulevard onto an Island that has yet to be named.
The London Bridge that was rebuilt at Lake Havasu City consists of a frame with stones from Rennie's London Bridge used as cladding. The cladding stones used are 150 to 200 millimetres (6 to 8 inches) thick. Some of the stones from the bridge were left behind at Merrivale Quarry at Princetown in Devon. When Merrivale Quarry was abandoned and flooded in 2003, some of the remaining stones were sold in an online auction."