Opened in 1928, the Champ Clark Bridge connected Louisiana, Missouri, with Illinois over the Mississippi River. Agreed upon by the Louisiana and Pittsfield Chambers of Commerce, the five-span Baltimore through truss bridge carried two lanes of traffic on U.S. Route 54. Its deck had two 10 foot lanes with no shoulders and a vertical clearance of 14.7 feet. Named for James Beauchamp Clark of Bowling Green, Missouri, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1911 to 1919, the bridge was adopted into the state highway system in 1953. A toll booth on the west end helped pay for construction from its opening in June 1928 until the bonds were retired in 1953. During its 90 years of use, hundreds of thousands of people crossed this link between Illinois and Missouri, joining the two Pike counties and their commerce, though it was also widely remembered for its notoriously narrow width and the dread of meeting an oncoming truck.