SAUK CITY, Wis. — Karen DeSanto apologized, being the last one to arrive Friday morning.
The state representative from Baraboo had gone to the Dane County side of the Wisconsin River, figuring that’s where her tour would begin.
One problem: no one else was there.
“I did go to the other side of the bridge thinking we would walk across. It’s not even here yet!” DeSanto said, laughing at her mistake.
Late next summer, that won’t be an issue.
Construction crews are turning what was a defunct, washed out rail bridge into a beautiful new pedestrian, biking, and snowmobile bridge. It will better link northwestern Dane County to Sauk City and beyond via the Great Sauk Trail, which opened in 2017.
Rep. DeSanto joined fellow lawmaker Alex Joers and about a dozen area stakeholders to check out the progress (with the group starting on the Sauk County side). WTBA, prime contractor Zenith Tech, and consulting firm MSA organized the tour.
“It’s kind of the heart of the community,” Sauk County Board Chair Tim McCumber said of the trail. “It gives people a place to go, things to do, it gets them through downtown. It’s just been a really fun thing to watch that life come into the community.”
Planning for the new bridge goes back about 10 years, McCumber told WTBA. The project costs around $10 million, with Dane and Sauk counties chipping in to supplement state and federal funds.
The bridge will be three prefabricated trusses spanning about 500 feet, a nod to the trail’s past life as a railroad. The piers are a huge undertaking. Zenith Tech has to dig 10-foot-wide shafts 130 feet deep into the riverbed.
“Oh, we do cool work at Zenith Tech, I knew this was going to be cool for them,” Senior Project Manager Scott Stroud said. “Everything out here, when it comes to the substructure of this bridge, is big.”
Zenith Tech aims to have the trusses set and bridge deck poured this year, will work on backchannel spans through the winter, and lay asphalt and concrete next year.
That schedule means by late-summer 2026, meeting someone “on the other side” will be a whole lot easier, making our state… a little more connected.
“It’s not just a bridge,” Rep. DeSanto said. “Sure, we’ll go over it, we’ll ride our bikes over it and it’ll be great, but to understand and see it in its infancy and its creation is pretty awesome.”
