Circle Drive Bridge

About

Circle Drive Bridge spans the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. It is a steel girder bridge, built in 1983 as part of the Circle Drive freeway system in northeast Saskatoon. At the time of construction, it cost $11.8 million to build.

Between its opening in 1983 and the opening of the Chief Mistawasis Bridge in 2018, it was the northernmost vehicular river crossing in the city. As with other bridges in the city, locals use several different names for this bridge. During construction there was an unsuccessful campaign to have it named after recently deceased former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker (despite the politician already having a road, a park, a museum and a memorialized street corner named after him).

Longtime Saskatonians also refer to it as the 42nd Street Bridge, a reference to a former name of the northern east–west leg of Circle Drive dating back to the 1960s; this name was also commonly applied to the bridge in media coverage and city council references to its planning and construction dating back to the early 1960s. For a brief time in the mid-2010s, it was referred to informally as the Circle Drive North Bridge to differentiate it from the...