With design in hand, the construction for the New River Gorge Bridge was brought to bid and awarded in June of 1973 to US Steel's American Bridge Division (Knudsen and Cain, 1978, American Bridge Society, 2024). The project was awarded as a lump-sum bid totaling $34,000,000, with $25,180,000 accounting for material cost and the rest for labor. The cost was shouldered by the West Virginia Department of Highways and the Federal Department of Transportation and was made to account for the over 20,000 tons of steel required as well as the large amount of laborers who would be required to work on the project (Knudsen and Cain, 1978).
Throughout construction, many attempts were made to reduce costs to a low level. Steel was fabricated en masse at locations off site and shipped only when required. The towers and their cables used to hold the arch up were maintained and reused after this project in a myriad of others throughout West Virginia and surrounding states (American Bridge Society, 2024). Gravity blocks were used to hold the cables in place, which were much cheaper than the tie-back alternative which would have required a large degree of rock drilling. At the end of construction, the total cost for the project came out to roughly $37,000,000 (Staubs, 2024).Â
Overall, the project was only 9% overbudget and was completed in an astoundingly fast three years. The New River Gorge Bridge now serves as a tourist attraction, drawing in thousands of visitors every year and stimulating the economy of the surrounding countryside (Bridge Walk, 2024).