Rio Grande Gorge Bridge

US-64 runs west from Taos across the flat sagebrush of the Taos Plateau and, with almost no warning, crosses the Rio Grande Gorge on a steel bridge strung over a slot in the dark basalt. The river runs a very long way below: 565 feet from the deck to the water by the most careful measurement, though signs, guidebooks and the bridge's own admirers have said 600 and 650 for decades.

The bridge went up between July 1963 and September 1965 in three spans, 300, 600 and 300 feet. It is a continuous cantilevered truss of steel box beams. No scaffolding could be raised from a canyon floor that far down, so each span was built outward from its supports section by section until the pieces met over the river. In 1966 the American Institute of Steel Construction named it the most beautiful steel bridge of the year in the long-span class. When it opened there was no money yet to carry the highway on beyond the west end, and Taos called it the bridge to nowhere.

Parking areas sit at both ends, and sidewalks with lookout bays run the length of the span; the wind across the deck can be strong. From the west lot a trail follows the rim. The gorge here is cut through layers of basalt that flooded the plateau from nearby volcanoes, and it runs for many miles north toward Colorado; the land around it has been Rio Grande del Norte National Monument since 2013. Below the bridge the river heads south into the Taos Box, sixteen miles of white water run by rafters in spring.