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The most recent set of construction photos appear on the main Photo Album page.

April 2002 – Pier 38 caisson and breakwater construction
Downstream view from the 1940 Greenville Bridge. The site for pier 37 is visible at the right of the photo. Further right is the concrete dock and the box-shaped caisson/cutting edge for pier 38 under construction. Project offices and the materials dock are located in the area to the right of the grain bins.
Downstream view from the 1940 Greenville Bridge: the project office trailers and the materials yard on the Arkansas shore. The template structure for the pier 38 breakwater and a number of white concrete buckets are on barges parked at the dock.
The concrete dock on the Arkansas shore. The box-shaped cutting edge for pier 38 is parked to the right.
Interior of pier 38 caisson.
Engineer Winchester Falbe of HNTB checks the mass temperature differential of concrete that has been poured into the pier 38 cutting edge. Too great a difference between the core and the outer edges of the hardening concrete can result in cracks.
The site of pier 38 off the Mississippi shore, viewed from the concrete dock on the Arkansas shore.
The concrete dock on the Arkansas shore. Concrete mixer trucks back onto this ramp to deposit their loads into the funnel-shaped hopper.
Close-up of the funnel-shaped hopper under the concrete dock. Concrete is dumped into the hopper, then placed into the white concrete buckets, visible behind the dock. The buckets are hauled to the pour site by pontoon barge.
Tow boats float the template structure (called a “waler”) into place at the future site of pier 38.
The template structure rests on a barge as it is floated into place.
Steel pipes are driven into the outer guides of the template. When the first two pipes are driven, the template is bolted to them. The barge supporting the template is then lowered and removed.
All of the steel pipes have been driven into the template, and initial construction of the breakwater is complete. The antenna-like objects protruding from the top are threaded bolts called “all-threads”; these are used to hoist the template to the proper height and level before it is fastened to the vertical pipes.