Dark Canyon Bridge

Located west of Rapid City just off Highway 44, Dark Canyon is a secluded area with a one-way access to some of the most iconic home sites in this area. The access road into this area crosses Rapid Creek 4 times over bridges using precast double tee deck units. Over the years the units have slowly deteriorated and Pennington County contracted with Ainsworth Benning Construction through this Dark Canyon Bridge Repair Project to repair/replace deck units on three of the four bridges. Because of the location, routing and control of traffic was a major factor to provide access to the homeowners and also enable security, fire, and emergency service vehicles to reach locations if the need arose. Carefully planning and coordination with all stake holders was required and shutdowns and progress updates were advertised through the local media and weekly project meetings. To complete this project for Ainsworth Benning Construction, Quentin Geddes selected as the Project Manager and Tigh Pfeifle Project Superintendent. Because of budget constraints this project included only the repair of the first three bridges. With that repair only precast concrete deck units that were unsound were repaired and deck rails were also removed and replaced. In total, 37 double tee precast bridge deck units were replaced in various lengths of 30 ft, 35 ft , and 50 ft. The deck units were precast and provided to the project by Pennington County. Removal and replacement was done by D & W Crane and Rigging providing the 150 ton crane to lift the individual units. During the operation all traffic was stopped while both removal and replacement of the precast deck units were completed. This required close coordination with the landowners, Pennington County Highway, and City of Rapid City. This confined location and accessibility made this a challenging project which was started in August 20,2018 and will be completed in Spring 2019. Start Date – 8/20/2018 Completion Date-To be completed in Spring 2019