22-February-2024. Lake Havasu City and London Bridge

I thought today was going to be an uneventful travel day. I woke up at 7000' altitude and a temperature of 28° in Flagstaff, AZ. My goal is to get to Palm Springs by Friday so today I wanted to go halfway; I checked out a map and that would be about 3+ hours west and the only sign of civilization I could find is a town called Lake Havasu City. I reserved a hotel room, plugged the address into my GPS and headed off.

I arrived a few hours later to an elevation of only 500 feet above sea level, and a temperature of 74° with infinite deep blue skies . Ahhhh!!! A great day to vacuum and wash my car. And to my great surprise Lake Havasu City turned out to be a beautiful little place with quite the unbelievable story!

Back in 1938 the Parker Dam was built on this portion of the Colorado River to create Lake Havasu (the Mojave word for blue) for the purpose of storing water to pump into 2 separate aqueducts.

Fast forward to 1968 when Robert McCullough (a real estate developer) purchased a 3,000+ acre plot here in the middle of the desert, hoping to develop it and convince people to move here. There was NOTHING here except sand. Total desert. People were reluctant to go to the middle of nowhere, so he decided to lure people to this area by creating a tourist attraction: he purchased London Bridge from the City of London - yes, the real London Bridge. The 1831 bridge over the Thames was no longer sturdy enough to carry the increased load of traffic that the 20th century brought to London, and consequently it was being replaced with a new one a couple hundred yards upstream.

McCullough had each exterior granite block numbered, removed, packed and shipped from London to Arizona. The blocks from the original London Bridge were brought to the United States via ship through the Panama Canal and unloaded in California where they were then transported to Arizona by rail. Once in AZ pieces were staged and then reassembled. The bridge was built in the desert and then a shallow canal was dug to fill the area below the span.

So today, I actually walked on, under and around London Bridge!

The bridge is a modern reinforced concrete structure that is clad/covrred in the original masonry of the 1830s London Bridge. It was completed in 1971 along with the Bridgewater Channel Canal which now separates a small peninsula from the mainland.

There are lots of shops and breweries and artifacts from London around here, including a red phone booth all giving the area a British flavor.

There is also a small ferry boat that will take you to the west side of the lake to a Native American casino - located in California "1 hour back". The round trip fee is only $4 - a bargain for visiting another state and time traveling. I couldn't resist taking a boat ride over on a beautiful afternoon to try my luck. Had a bite to eat and made my way to the 3 card poker table. I got lucky and in a short amount of time turned my original $60 into $130 and decided to take my winnings and head back to the east side of the lake.

Below are some pictures I took of the movie they show at the visitor center near the bridge. Amazing that someone bought a chunk of desert and then created an attraction to get people to go there..... and a bridge in the middle of the desert of all things! The picture of the bridge installed in the stand is amazing .... and it was a huge success - the population of Lake Havasu city is now 60,000 residents.