The New Harmony bridge closed in 2012, but after recent legislation in Indiana and Illinois, it may be closer to reopening
Illinois passed a last week bill creating an authority to oversee the bridge, located between New Harmony and southern Illinois. Indiana passed its own version of the law in March.
Right now, according to a press release from the Harmony Way Bridge Project, the bridge is the only one in the country to be overseen by a federal commission, after the U.S. government bought it in 1941.
"We are very hopeful that Indiana and Illinois will now have a vehicle with this legislation," Project Director Lora Arneberg wrote in the press release, "to find a lasting solution for this almost 80 year long struggle to get the Harmony Way Bridge into local hands and a sustainable business model.”
Arneberg would like to see the bridge reopened as a pedestrian park.
