Sidu River Bridge
suspension bridge

The Sidu River Bridge (Chinese: 四渡河大桥, romanized: Sìdù Hé Dà Qiáo) is a 1,222 m-long (4,009 ft) suspension bridge crossing the valley of the Sidu River near Yesanguan in Badong County of the Hubei Province of the People's Republic of China. The bridge was designed by CCSHCC Second Highway Consultants Company Limited, and built at a cost of 720 million yuan (approximately US$100 million). It opened to traffic on November 15, 2009.
Geography
The bridge is part of the east-west G50 Huyu Expressway that parallels China National Highway 318, also an east-west route between Shanghai and Chongqing, crossing the wide belt of mountains that separate the Sichuan Basin from the lowlands of eastern Hubei. The Yangtze River pierces the same mountain belt 50 km (31 mi) to the north, forming the famous Three Gorges. The Yiwan Railway, completed in 2010 and running parallel to the highway, has been described as China's most difficult to build and most expensive (per km) rail line.
The bridge spans a 500-meter-deep (1,600 ft) valley of the Sidu River (a left tributary of the Qingjiang River), and superseded the Royal Gorge Bridge and the Beipan River Guanxing Highway Bridge as the highest bridge in the world until it in turn was surpassed by the Duge Bridge in 2016.
Design and construction
The bridge's design includes H-shaped towers, a truss-stiffened main span, and unsuspended side spans. The Warren-type trusses were constructed in 71 sections with the largest section weighing 91.6 metric tons (101.0 short tons). The trusses are 6.5 m (21 ft) tall and 26 meters (85 ft) wide.
“Sidu River Bridge” enters the record as suspension bridge. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sidu, River and Bridge can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Sidu River Bridge” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Sidu, River and Bridge provides the most credible route into that argument.
Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1110979. Authority coordinates are 30.622, 110.395. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2009, 2010 and 2016.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sidu River Bridge” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.