JANUARY 30, 2010 - Trying to get to the Central Avenue Bridge today is not the easiest of exercises, given the ongoing construction of the re-aligned Crosstown Expressway.

But finding a way across the Oklahoma River during the 1920s was even more difficult, and traffic traveling along Highways 77 and 66 routinely clogged Oklahoma City’s downtown business district.

It should be no surprise, then, that the inclusion of an East Side Viaduct into a plan rerouting the highway traffic through Oklahoma City away from downtown made news this week in 1930.

S. Herbert Hare, a planning consultant hired by the city, recommended bringing the traffic south through the city along Lincoln Boulevard to NE 12, then building a new street swinging the traffic west over to Stiles Avenue.

Then, designs called for a long bridge to carry the traffic across the Rock Island line north of Bricktown, across an existing Riverside Park and the Katy Railroad lines south of Bricktown, then across the river and another set of tracks owned by the Frisco Railroad before returning back to ground level on Central Avenue, north of SE 15. (1)

But designing a plan calling for such a project would be one thing. Getting it built would be something else lasting the next 20-plus years.

NEW VIDEOS! AND YES, LINDA IS BACK!

Oh Linda, oh Linda, you were once always just a remote click away. We took you for granted. And then you were gone, replaced by a bunch of souless big box operators. You were funny, you were short, you graciously signed an autograph for me while my family visited Santa Claus at North Park Mall so very long ago.