The bridge spanning a creek on North Mulberry Street in Fayette near the CMU football field was closed by the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT), effective Friday morning. MoDOT engineers inspected the bridge on Thursday and told the city the bridge had to be closed indefinitely.

The Fayette Police Department announced the closure on social media on Thursday afternoon, but the bridge was not closed off until Friday morning.

This is not the first time the bridge has come under scrutiny. In June 2023, the city applied for a grant to repair or replace the bridge, which was constructed in 1974. The grant application stated that the bridge “is at the end of its service life and is severely deteriorated and unsafe.”

The grant was denied, and nothing has happened since.

At the time, the cost to replace the bridge was estimated at $442,500.

“It has been rated as ‘poor,’ and the rating has gotten worse and worse on it each year,” said then Fayette Mayor Jeremy Dawson during a city council meeting on June 13, 2023. The closure creates a 1.6-mile detour that would take travelers trying to access North Mulberry Street around on Highway 5 and through a residential area on Givens Road. Such a detour not only poses increases in emergency response times but would also limit access to oversized trucks and other extended-length and high-load vehicles and farm equipment.

The closure could have other impacts as well. In October, Central Methodist University announced a new $30 million capital improvement campaign, a portion of which is aimed at constructing a new soccer facility at Alexander Field, which lies just north of the bridge. In fact, the bridge divides the current football/soccer field and Alexander Field.

MoDOT ordered another bridge closure at Stump Island in Glasgow. On Friday, the City of Glasgow reported on its Facebook page that no traffic is permitted on the bridge and that travelers must use alternate routes until further notice. A MoDOT bridge inspector reportedly noticed there was an unsafe pylon on the south end.