After three months, the Elkhorn Creek Bridge on Route 161 is back in business.

Construction has been completed on the one-lane bridge, which is located 1.6 miles south of Route CC in Montgomery County. The $1.1 million project forced a closure on Route 161, allowing drivers to take alternative routes. For example, if drivers wanted to travel to Middletown, they had to drive on Route V eastbound, then northbound on Route E through Bellflower and westbound on Route CC before proceeding northbound on 161 to get to Middletown.

Don Schnieders Excavating Company completed the construction of the bridge.

“The contractor was supposed to be done within the first week of November, so they were a few weeks behind,” Missouri Department of Transportation Area Engineer Jeff Niemeyer said. “I think they kind of caught some rain and some materials didn’t come in on time.”

The Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission awarded the contract to Schneiders Excavating Company to work on the bridge. Construction began on Aug. 5.

“The bridge was so bad from a condition standpoint,” Niemeyer said. “I want to say that the bridge was over 80 years old, so it’s been around for a long time. It’s one of those one-lane bridges, so we’ve been trying to get those off our system to get to a new wider two-lane bridge, so this will be quite the improvement for the area.”

Niemeyer said anytime bridges get into poor condition, MoDOT immediately makes plans to replace them. The Elkhorn Creek Bridge was in good condition for most of its life.

“MoDOT is one of those places where we have 10,000 bridges in the state, so we were trying to replace the ones in poor condition,” Niemeyer said. “Even though that one-lane bridge was one lane, it wasn’t in poor condition yet. We just have the need in our funds to replace poor bridges in other parts of the state.”