Nelson West Arm Bridge
DESCRIPTION OF HISTORIC PLACE
The Nelson West Arm Bridge is an 800 metre long, two-lane, orange cantilevered bridge connecting Nelson Avenue to Highway 3A across the West Arm of Kootenay Lake.
HERITAGE VALUE
The Nelson West Arm Bridge is important for its historical, cultural and engineering values, as a major community accomplishment and as a symbol of the city’s movement into a modern phase of its history.
Agitation for a bridge to the north shore is a cultural marker of the increasing prominence of the automobile in the connection of the city with the lakefront communities to its north. As early as 1911, citizens of Nelson were petitioning the provincial government of the day for a bridge from Nelson across the West Arm to the North Shore of Kootenay Lake to ease transportation pressures for the growing city, a situation which would continue into the 1950s in spite of the exponential growth of traffic on the southern trans-provincial highway.
Opened as a silver and green-coloured toll bridge on November 7, 1957, the Nelson Bridge has symbolic importance as the replacement of the original succession of increasingly larger free cable ferries that traversed the West Arm beginning in 1913. Representative of the modern age demand for speed and ease of automobile access, the bridge has cultural value as a reflection of the post-WWII suburban growth of the city to the north and east, and the dramatic alteration of both the city’s transportation system and the original urban grid pattern of the two city blocks of Nelson Avenue leading up to its access.
The bridge is important for its slender profile and truss pattern which reflects the bridge engineering technology and aesthetics of its era. Its fit into the landscape of the West arm is accomplished by its design, including a graceful cantilever through truss, supporting concrete piers, and landmark status at the eastern end of Nelson.
The Nelson bridge reflects the increased use of the automobile and provincial government policy during the 1950s, a decade marked by highway and bridge infrastructure development throughout the province. The Social Credit government was geared towards ameliorating regional disparities and Nelson was one recipient of infrastructure funding for its new bridge. The $4,000,000 bridge carried all southern trans provincial automobile traffic until the completion of the Salmo-Creston cutoff in 1964. Tolls were removed from the bridge that same year and the Toll Bridge Offices were adapted for use by the B.C. Ambulance Service.
The landscape and land use at the bridgeheads are physical examples of typical urban development of the 1950s.The Dairy Queen is an example of the type of services and facilities that took advantage of the expansion of automobile use in Nelson, and the increased volume of traffic that occurred with the bridge construction and the city’s suburban growth to the north and east, an indication of the city’s entry into a modern era seen in the development of automobile-oriented tourism, recreation, and daily life in the 1950s and afterwards.
From the City of Nelson Heritage Register, Page 71