City: Cincinnati, OH

Category: Parks & Recreation

Description: The Covington–Cincinnati Suspension Bridge opened on December 2, 1866, when 120,000 people—half the population of Cincinnati—crossed the span on foot. The bridge, engineered by John Augustus Roebling, almost didn’t get built, thanks to squabbling between the two states. No one had ever constructed an overpass across so wide a river as the Ohio; the impressive stone towers, linking the arched tension cables, rise 230 feet above water. (Roebling used this bridge design as the prototype for his Brooklyn Bridge.) During the 1937 flood, the bridge was the only span above water—barely—along the entire length of the state. The steel structure—painted blue in 1976 and officially renamed the John A. Roebling Bridge in 1983—was made famous in a scene from the Tom Cruise film Rain Man.