The Siuslaw River Bridge was built as part of the Coast Bridges Project, one of five bridges designed by Conde B. McCullough and constructed during the Great Depression from 1934 to 1936 with Public Works Administration funding under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, providing jobs to struggling families along the Oregon coast. The five coastal bridges were the Alsea Bay Bridge, Coos Bay Bridge, Siuslaw River Bridge, Umpqua River Bridge, and Yaquina Bay Bridge. After 20 months of construction, the first cars, bicycles, and pedestrians crossed the Siuslaw River Bridge in a parade on March 31, 1936, and it was officially dedicated on May 24, 1936, during the Rhododendron Days celebration. By creating a new way to travel across the Siuslaw River, the bridge fully connected Florence to the Oregon Coast Highway System, and tourism increased by 72 percent in the first year as the city's focus began shifting from the river to the highway district. The bridge is a double bascule drawbridge that raises to allow marine traffic to pass; in the past it opened mainly for cargo ships and barges carrying lumber from local sawmills, while today it opens mainly for fishing boats and sailing vessels with tall masts. In 2011, a new computer-operated control mechanism was installed to run the drawbridge, while manual controls remained available but required an operator at either end to raise both the north and south portions. Its features include decorative entry pylons, supports with gothic arches called bents, piers at the ends of the tied arches and at the bascule lift span machinery and counterweights, pilings made of Douglas fir logs driven 30 to 40 feet below the river bottom except at the southern end where the foundation is bedrock, a bascule movable span, and tied arches connected by a tension member across the base.