The bridge that currently crosses the Canje River (known too as Canje Creek), a tributary of the Berbice River, is reported to be the third such structure known to have been built, and serves as a vital connection along the Corentyne Road.
The original structure was built in 1830, a year before the colonies of Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo were united under British rule. A wooden construction, it was built by slaves who, it is said, were given their freedom three years before emancipation. They were also given land in New Amsterdam.
Then, in the mid-1890s, an iron and concrete structure, designed in 1891 by English civil engineer Joseph Westwood, was built to replace the wooden bridge. The 336 feet long new bridge allowed for a roadway width for traffic of 17 feet.
Considered a marvel of engineering at the time, it was the largest bridge in the colony then. The bridge was designed to swing open to allow seagoing vessels through.
The swing span from the centre turned on a single pivot that could be operated by just one person. It would then swing back into its original position to allow traffic to cross once again.
The structure took four years to build and was said to be commissioned in 1898.
However, by the early 1970s, the bridge was considered antiquated and inadequate for the traffic of the time.
According to a 1972 recommendation to construct a new bridge over the Canje River, which was presented by the US Department of State Agency for International Development, among other things, the swing bridge had become “drastically inconsistent with the high standard 50 miles per-hour design speed of the Corentyne Road on both sides of the bridge.”
While the recommendation advised of a new swing bridge to be built, this did not happen. Instead the current fixed Canje River bridge, some 0.38 kilometres (approx. 1,250 feet) long and 33 feet wide, was built with a 45 feet high crossover.
The swing bridge was decommissioned in 1975/76 while the current Canje Bridge is said to have become operational in 1978, after an 18-month construction period. (Guyana Times Sunday Magazine)
