Pont de Grésin, Suspension bridge in Léaz and Éloise, France.
The Pont de Grésin is a 160-metre steel suspension bridge between Léaz (Ain) and Éloise (Haute-Savoie), named after the hamlet of Grésin. Its span of 114 metres hangs 15 to 20 metres above the dammed Rhône, held by slender steel lattice pylons braced with St Andrew's crosses above and below the concrete-slab deck, which is stiffened by steel-profile railings.
A ferry crossing is attested at this spot since the Middle Ages, and a bridge resting on a mid-river rock existed by 1460. In the 17th century the crossing formed part of the Spanish Road linking the Spanish Habsburgs to the Spanish Netherlands. The 1897 stone arch bridge was destroyed in 1940; a wooden footbridge replacing it was burned by the Maquis in 1943. The present bridge was built 1948–1949 for the Compagnie nationale du Rhône and handed to Léaz on 1 December 1951.
The bridge takes its name from the hamlet of Grésin on the Léaz side. In the 17th century it carried the Spanish Road, the route linking the Spanish Habsburgs with the Spanish Netherlands. Today the deck is a concrete slab crossed by the Chemin du Pont de Grésin, a little-used farm track.
The bridge carries the Chemin du Pont de Grésin, a little-used farm track; neither Léaz nor Éloise has signposts to it, only inconspicuous street signs at the village edges where the lanes are marked as dead ends. The deck is concrete slabs stiffened by steel-profile railings, and the crossing stands 15 to 20 m above the dammed river.
The bridge stands 15 to 20 metres above the backed-up water of the Génissiat dam reservoir, finished 11 km downstream just before construction. Grésin residents demanded the crossing because the reservoir had cut them off from their woods at Éloise. The 160 m length is measured between the anchor blocks set into the rock walls.
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