Digging a channel through the desert

When the London Bridge came to Havasu, McCulloch was determined there would be water under it. But to make that happen, contractors would have to move more than 400,000 tons of earth to create what would be known as the Bridgewater Channel.

The Channel didn’t begin as a single waterway, however. While the channel was still being built in 1970, multiple smaller channels were designed to allow workers the space they needed to rebuild the London Bridge across it.

Part of that construction included the formation of four hills of earth, where the bridge’s arches would eventually stand. The creation of those hills in 1970 ultimately aided construction of the bridge by reducing the amount of equipment necessary to lift each of the stones – some of which weighed more than 800 pounds, to where they would eventually lie.

The construction of the Bridgewater Channel, through what is now known as the Island, included more than 1,000 feet of seawall to protect the channel’s coastline from erosion – much of which still remains in the channel almost 50 years later.

The channel took almost two years to build before being opened, and water from the surrounding Colorado River was allowed to flow for the first time beneath the newly-constructed bridge.

The Bridgewater Channel lies at the base of what is now known as the Island. The Channel is about a mile long from its southernmost point at Thompson Bay, to its northernmost point at Lake Havasu State Park. At its widest, the channel is about six hundred feet long, accommodating the four arches of the bridge that now spans across it.