Skip to main content

King's Highway 420, the Rainbow Bridge and Niagara Falls

The final leg in my trip through Ontario this past April was on King's Highway 420 to Niagara Falls.



KH 420 is a short 3.3 Kilometer/2.1 Mile Freeway located completely in Niagara Falls.  KH 420 has a western terminus at Queen Elizabeth Way and an eastern terminus at Regional Road 102/Falls Avenue.  The route of KH 420 continues as a Regional Road of the same number to the Rainbow Bridge and the American Border on Falls Avenue..  Presently KH 420 is the shortest 400 series freeway in Ontario.

The route of KH 420 was part of the original 1941 alignment of Queen Elizabeth Way which was routed through Niagara Falls.  The Rainbow Bridge over the Niagara River was a replacement span which began construction in May of 1940 and ended eighteen months later.  The Rainbow Bridge was a replacement for earlier the Honeymoon Bridge which fell into the Niagara River in 1938.  In 1972 KH 420 was designated over what was Queen Elizabeth Way after freeway upgrades were made.  The 1955 Ontario Highway map below shows Queen Elizabeth Way in it's original configuration.

1955 Ontario Highway Map 

My approach to KH 420 was from Queen Elizabeth Way eastbound.



KH 420 eastbound is signed at 80KMPH.


KH 420 continues to Regional Road 102 at Stanley Avenue.  The highway continues eastbound towards the Rainbow Bridge as Regional Road 420 on Falls Avenue.





Rainbow Bridge traffic to the United States is directed to use the left lane of Falls Avenue.  Traffic to Niagara Falls is directed to stay in the right lane.



I took the alternate route to Niagara Falls via Victoria Avenue and Bender Street.





From the merge point of Bender Street and Falls Avenue the border crossing on the western flank of the Rainbow Bridge can be seen.



Signage along Falls Avenue directs traffic towards either the Rainbow Bridge or Niagara Falls.


Falls Avenue terminus at Niagara Parkway headed southbound on the western flank of Niagara Falls.



I parked in Queen Victoria Park above Horseshoe Falls.  Queen Victoria Park was commissioned in 1885 and opened in 1888.


Horseshoe Falls is the largest of three falls at Niagara Falls.  Horseshoe Falls is 165 feet high but has a massive width of 2,700 feet.


The visitor center in Queen Victoria Park is located in the Table Rock House.  The north building of the Table Rock Center opened in 1926 followed by the south building opening in 1974.



The "Scenic Tunnels" (known now as the Journey Behind the Falls) is located in the Table Rock Center.




The Scenic Tunnels include several historical information placards.  The one below details the 1938 collapse of the Honeymoon Bridge.  The Honeymoon Bridge was constructed in 1897 and opened in 1898.  The Honeymoon Bridge was a replacement for the Niagara Clifton Bridge which had been destroyed in 1889.  The Honeymoon Bridge was officially known as the Upper Steel Arch Bridge and was built according to the namesake design.  The Honeymoon Bridge was built with a fatal flaw in that ice tended to accumulate around it's abutments and had to be constantly maintained in winter months.  In January of 1938 when a wind storm sent about 100 feet of ice into the abutments which collapsed the Honeymoon Bridge into the Niagara River as a single piece.


Surprisingly going over Niagara Falls seems to be somewhat survivable.


The longest Scenic Tunnel extends 151 feet behind Horseshoe Falls.



Bridal Veil Falls and American Falls can be seen to the right of the Rainbow Bridge looking northbound below.  Bridal Veil Falls is the smallest of the three falls at Niagara Falls with a crest of only 56 feet.  American Falls is the second largest in Niagara Falls at 950 feet in width.


The Rainbow Bridge is officially known as the Niagara Falls International Rainbow Bridge.  The Rainbow Bridge is an arch structure that is 1,450 in length and has a maximum height of 202 feet above the Niagara River.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third

Old River Lock & Control Structure (Lettsworth, LA)

  The Old River Control Structure (ORCS) and its connecting satellite facilities combine to form one of the most impressive flood control complexes in North America. Located along the west bank of the Mississippi River near the confluence with the Red River and Atchafalaya River nearby, this structure system was fundamentally made possible by the Flood Control Act of 1928 that was passed by the United States Congress in the aftermath of the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 however a second, less obvious motivation influenced the construction here. The Mississippi River’s channel has gradually elongated and meandered in the area over the centuries, creating new oxbows and sandbars that made navigation of the river challenging and time-consuming through the steamboat era of the 1800s. This treacherous area of the river known as “Turnbull’s Bend” was where the mouth of the Red River was located that the upriver end of the bend and the Atchafalaya River, then effectively an outflow

California State Route 203 the proposed Minaret Summit Highway

California State Route 203 is an approximately nine-mile State Highway located near Mammoth Lakes in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Mono County.  California State Route 203 as presently configured begins at US Route 395, passes through Mammoth Lakes and terminates at the Madera County line at Minaret Summit.  What is now California State Route 203 was added to the State Highway System in 1933 as Legislative Route Number 112.  The original Mammoth Lakes State Highway ended at Lake Mary near the site of Old Mammoth and was renumbered to California State Route 203 in 1964.  The modern alignment of the highway to Minaret Summit was adopted during 1967.   The corridor of Minaret Summit and Mammoth Pass have been subject to numerous proposed Trans-Sierra Highways.  The first corridor was proposed over Mammoth Pass following a Southern Pacific Railroad survey in 1901.  In 1931 a corridor between the Minarets Wilderness and High Sierra Peaks Wilderness was reserved by the Forest Service for po