Tulsa's original 11th Street Bridge was built in 1916 as a Highway 64 crossing of the Arkansas River, linking downtown Tulsa with the oil fields west of the river. Unlike most bridges of its day, the art deco structure was built of steel reinforced concrete rather than steel and wood, and at the time it was the only concrete bridge west of the Mississippi River. The 1916 bridge carried one lane of automobile traffic on each side of a railroad track in the middle of the structure. In 1934, a second structure was built on the downstream side of the original arch bridge, and the two were joined by a common deck that widened the crossing to four lanes of vehicular traffic. In 1926, the 11th Street Bridge played an instrumental role in Cyrus Avery's successful effort to align a highway from Chicago to Los Angeles through Oklahoma and Tulsa, a highway later designated as Route 66. For more than half a century, the arch bridge remained an integral part of that historic highway until Interstate 44 diverted most travel. By the late 1970s, the bridge had fallen into such disrepair that it was unsafe for vehicular traffic, and after Tulsa built a new bridge downstream of the 1934 structure, the old bridge closed to traffic in 1980. In 1996, the 11th Street Bridge, including both the 1916 and 1934 structures, was listed on the U.S. Department of the Interior's National Register of Historic Places. In 2004, the Tulsa City Council officially renamed it the Cyrus Avery Route 66 Memorial Bridge.
