Witching Hour - Strange History: The bridge that was restrung before it opened

Witching Hour - Strange History The cables were already up when the builders decided to replace them all. Broken wires had turned up in the Ambassador Bridge's new steel cables in 1929. It still opened to traffic on Nov. 15, 1929.

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Witching Hour is our nightly local history and folklore feature. Ghost stories and legends are retold as stories people tell, not reported as fact. Sources are listed below the story.

Tonight's Witching Hour is strange history from high above the Detroit River.

A record bridge on new wire

Work on the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor and Detroit began in May 1927. The builder was McClintic-Marshall, a Pittsburgh engineering firm. When the bridge opened, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world, a record it held until the George Washington Bridge in New York opened in 1931.

Its main cables were made from a new kind of heat-treated steel wire. The same kind of wire was being used on the Mount Hope Bridge in Rhode Island.

Cutting it all down

Early in 1929, broken wires were found in the Mount Hope Bridge cables. Broken wires then turned up in the Ambassador Bridge cables too, before the roadway was finished.

Work stopped in March 1929. McClintic-Marshall decided to replace all of the heat-treated wire with standard cold-drawn steel wire and paid about half a million dollars to do it.

Opened anyway

Even with the new cables, the bridge opened to traffic on Nov. 15, 1929, ahead of schedule.

Next time you cross, look up at the cables. They are not the first set.