How The London Bridge Was Sold to America

 For centuries, children and kindergartners have been singing and dancing to the tune of London Bridge is Falling Down, but when engineers discovered that London Bridge was actually falling in the early 1900s, it was no laughing matter. The stone bridge was over a century old, and was London's busiest, with 8,000 pedestrians and 900 vehicles passing every hour. Surveyors found that the bridge was slowly sinking – about a third of a centimeter each year. When measurements were taken in 1924, they found that the eastern side of the bridge was about 9 cm lower than the west. Four more decades passed before the City Council reached a decision.

His suggestion was met with incredulity, but after some discussion, the council agreed that they could use the money and put the bridge on the market. This was 1967.

In the months that followed, several inquiries came to the council about the bridge, but no concrete proposals were received. Finally, with five weeks left before the closing date, March 28, 1968, Mr. Lakin volunteered to go to America to sell it. At a press conference at the British-American Chamber of Commerce in New York, when a reporter asked what was so special about the bridge—after all, the bridge was neither very old (built in 1832), nor had any The house was, or was, the subject of a nursery rhyme (the poem is before the bridge) - Mr. Luckin replied: “London Bridge is not just a bridge. It dates back to the first century B.C. It inherits 2,000 years of history dating back to the time of Roman Londinium..."

Shortly afterward, Robert McCulloch, a Missouri businessman and owner of McCulloch Oil, signed a sales contract worth $2.46 million.

A few years earlier, McCulloch had obtained thousands of acres of land from the government near Arizona's Lake Havasu, a large body of water created by a dam on the Colorado River, on the condition that McCulloch would develop the land. He established the community of Lake Havasu City at this site, but he had trouble attracting potential land buyers. When his business associate C.V. Wood told them about the London Bridge, and both concluded that it was exactly the kind of thing needed to make Lake Havasu an attractive resort town and tourist destination.

The 950-foot-long, 33,000-ton structure was carefully dismantled block by block, packed in boxes and then shipped via the Panama Canal to Long Beach, California. From Long Beach, the granite blocks were transported by truck 300 miles to their destination. It cost McCulloch $7 million just to ship the blocks.

Then the complex process of reassembling the structure began. Fortunately, everything was carefully planned. Before demolition, workers had carefully counted each stone, so the reconstruction process – although slow and laborious, taking 3 years to complete – went without any major hiccups. Inevitably, some stones were damaged and had to be replaced with local granite. To give the new stones a centuries-old appearance, they were covered with soot from kerosene burners.

To ensure that the bridge could handle modern traffic, a hollow core of steel-reinforced concrete was built and old granite blocks were laid over it. Since there was no river in Lake Havasu City, the bridge was built on dry land, but as the project was nearing completion, a mile-long channel was cut under the bridge and allowed to fill with water from Lake Havasu.

London Bridge officially opened to much fanfare on 10 October 1971. There were fireworks, parades, entertainment, the dramatic launch of hundreds of balloons and white doves, the landing of colorful hot air balloons and special guests and dignitaries such as the Lord Mayor of London.

McCulloch's gamble paid off and land sales in Lake Havasu City skyrocketed. The town, which had a population of only a few hundred in the 1960s, grew to 10,000 by 1974. That year, the bridge attracted approximately 2 million visitors to the new city.

Today, Lake Havasu City is home to 52,000 residents. For them, the bridge is just a part of everyday life, providing the only way to get to the marina. "The novelty of driving over London Bridge has worn off," writes RoadsideAmerica.