LAKE HAVASU

Our first stop after leaving the Payne's in AZ was Lake Havasu City. This town was the "Brain Child" of Robert McCulloch in 1963 which started out with him purchasing 26 square miles at a cost of $73.47 per acre and an abandoned Army Air Corps landing strip witch provided him the airport necessary to bring in prospective land buyers.


But he wasn't finished with spectacular purchases! In 1965 he was the winning bidder for the "then" sinking & in need of replacement London Bridge...in yes...London England. The bridge originally was built for pedestrian traffic but was seeing 100,000 pedestrians and 10,000 vehicles each day and was sinking more than 1/8 inch every year because it was built on too soft of a foundation.


McCulloch purchased the bridge, 930 feet long, 49 feet and made up of 22 million pounds of stone for $2,460,000. As the bridge was dismantled each of it's 10,276 pieces were marked with a number so placement in the reconstruction could be the same once the bridge arrived in Lake Havasu, 7,000 miles away. Cost of shipping and reconstruction was over $2,700,000.

Once called the world's biggest jig-saw puzzle from an over achiever with the flair for the seemingly impossible.

SanTony