Ogden UT Pike Abuilding

Utah will get its first modern era toll road in 2000. Called the Adams Avenue Turnpike, in Ogden to the north of Salt Lake City, it will provide the southern Washington Terrace part of the area with a convenient new connection to I-84 and another way to get onto I-15 to the center of the metro area. For the turnpike developers, the Stephens family, it will open up a so far isolated parcel of several hundred acres of commercial land just off the interstate, not far from its merge with I-15. The toll road of 2km (1.3mi) goes down a steepish (8% grade) hill and over the Weber River and Union Pacific Railroad tracks.

This is historic ground. The bridge also spans the Mormon Trail trodden by early settlers to the area, and by tens of thousands of California’s early settlers in their ox-drawn conestoga wagons who had braved the Rocky mountains and were heading for the fearsome Sierra Nevadas. The famous golden spike marking the linkup of the Chinese and Irish built sections of the first transcontinental railroad was driven a little northwest of Ogden at Promontory Point just 130 years ago. Spanning this piece of history with a deep steel plate girder bridge, the Adams Avenue Turnpike will have a climbing lane up the hill plus a lane each way and toll booths at the bottom of the hill, just a stone’s throw from the pioneer trails.

Bruce Stephens who is organizing the $8.5m toll project says he and his developer father Doug Stephens found themselves at the decision point for the road earlier in the year when steel prices threatened to soar because of US govt action against steel imports from Eastern Europe.

“We got a good price on the steel (for the bridge) and that was it. No going back. We got the steel a bit earlier than we needed it, but they are fabricating it now and we’ve got earthworks under way and piles and we hope to have the road finished next year.”

Funding was out of the Stephens family’s personal resources plus $2m from the state legislature and some local bank money. The Adams Av Turnpike will make use of an existing interchange (IC-85) that so far only has connections southward into Hill Air Force Base and by spanning the river and railroad tracks northward, will provide a more direct connection into the center of South Ogden and Washington Terrace. It will connect to Washington Boulevard, the main street of Ogden. (Contact 801 479 5960, see TRnl#13 Mar 97 p1)