The old Chain of Rocks Bridge is one of the stranger, better St. Louis river sights: a long steel truss bridge with a deliberate bend in the middle, thrown across the Mississippi at the city’s northern edge. It once carried Route 66 traffic, but today the drama comes from walking or cycling above the river instead of driving over it.
Come for the industrial view as much as the bridge itself. The crossing links into regional trails on both sides of the river, with the water intake towers, barges, and low floodplain horizon giving it a very different feel from downtown’s grander Eads Bridge.