Dames Point Bridge in Jacksonville, Florida

The Dames Point Bridge is the cable-stayed bridge that carries the I-295 East Beltway over the St. Johns River in Jacksonville, officially named the Napoleon Bonaparte Broward Bridge.

The University of North Florida George Lansing Taylor collection record for the bridge says the Napoleon Bonaparte Broward bridge, also known as the Dames Point bridge, opened in 1989, crosses the St Johns River on I-295 East Beltway, is one of the largest cable-stayed bridges in the United States, and was named after a former governor of Florida. The City of Jacksonville goes further: its parks page for the riverside park beneath the north approach calls it the longest cable-stayed bridge in the United States.

Federal navigation guidance places it on the river. The U.S. Coast Pilot 4, Chapter 9, dated October 11, 2026, describes a fixed highway bridge that crosses the river just above Blount Island at Dames Point, separate from the seven bridges it counts at downtown Jacksonville. The UNF record pins the bridge at latitude 30.372134, longitude -81.552543, and the Coast Pilot puts the nearby Dames Point Turn at 30°23.1'N., 81°33.6'W., a sharp bend in the ship channel by Blount Island. The table below lists the Jacksonville bridges the Coast Pilot names after it, with their clearances.

The Jacksonville Transportation Authority opened the Dames Point Bridge to the general public in 1989, according to the authority's own history timeline.

The JTA history lists the 1989 entry as the Dames Point Bridge, officially named the Napoleon Bonaparte Broward Bridge, opening to the general public, the same year the Skyway starter line, spanning seven-tenths of a mile, began operations downtown. The same timeline traces the builder back to 1955, when the Florida State Legislature formed the Jacksonville Expressway Authority, and to 1971, when that authority became the Jacksonville Transportation Authority as it entered the bus business.

The Jacksonville bridge came at the end of a toll era. The JTA timeline records that in 1988, the year before the Dames Point opening, tolls were removed at the Mathews Bridge, Fuller Warren Bridge, Hart Bridge, Trout River Bridge and J. Turner Butler Boulevard. Earlier entries show the authority beginning construction of the Commodores Point Bridge, the Isaiah David Hart Bridge, in 1963.

The Jacksonville Transit Authority hired Howard, Needles, Tammen and Bergendoff (HNTB) in 1979 to design the main span, and the construction contract went to the joint venture Pensacola-Tyger in 1985, according to FDOT.

The Florida Department of Transportation's Historic Highway Bridges of Florida, 2010 Update lists the bridge as FDOT #720518 and describes it as two miles long and 175 feet above the main channel, connecting northern Duval County with the Arlington and Beaches area of Jacksonville via SR-9A. It says HNTB developed the cable-stayed design in consultation with Dr. Ulrich Finsterwalker, and that the bridge opened to traffic in 1989.

The report gives the Jacksonville bridge's dimensions in detail. The central span is 1,300 feet between two H-shaped towers that rise 471 feet above the waterline, and the concrete and steel deck hangs from 168 steel cables, sheathed in steel pipe, that meet the edge girder at 35-foot intervals. FDOT calls it the second cable-stayed bridge built in Florida, and says that until the Sidney Lanier Bridge in Brunswick, Georgia was completed in 2003, it was the only bridge in the United States with the harp, or parallel, stay arrangement on two vertical planes. The report found it eligible for the National Register under Criterion C for engineering, under Criterion Consideration G for properties less than 50 years old.

The state's own figures do not all agree. The same FDOT report's historic context chapter dates the opening of the Napoleon Bonaparte Broward Bridge at Dames Point to 1988, says it has the longest central span of its type in the U.S., and notes that it was toll-financed, while its bridge description gives 1989, matching the JTA timeline. FDOT's 175 feet above the main channel also differs from the 169 and 174 foot clearances in NOAA's Coast Pilot, which measures clearance for navigation.

The Coast Pilot gives the Dames Point Bridge a clearance of 169 feet, rising to 174 feet for 200 feet on each side of the bridge centerline.

That is the highest clearance among the Jacksonville bridges the Coast Pilot lists on the St. Johns, as the table shows. The same chapter notes that overhead power cables with a clearance of 175 feet cross the river about 9 miles above the entrance at Blount Island, a figure within a few feet of the bridge's own.

Source for every row: U.S. Coast Pilot 4, Chapter 9 (NOAA, October 11, 2026).

The Dames Point name also belongs to one of the Jacksonville port's container terminals, JAXPORT's Dames Point Marine Terminal.

JAXPORT describes its Dames Point Marine Terminal as located 14.2 nautical miles from the sea buoy, with 5,002 linear feet of deepwater berths, six post-Panamax container cranes and six 40-ton rubber-tired gantry cranes. The port authority says its Intermodal Container Transfer Facility at Dames Point moves containers directly between vessels, trucks and trains, and that CSX serves it with two daily trains carrying up to 200 containers each.

The river turns sharply here. The Coast Pilot describes Dames Point Turn as a sharp turn complicated by crosscurrents from the old channel behind Blount Island, and notes that the channel in this area is used as a turning basin for vessels using the Blount Island terminal.

Napoleon Bonaparte Broward was Florida's nineteenth governor, serving from January 3, 1905 to January 5, 1909, and a Duval County native, according to the Florida Department of State.

The Department of State biography says Broward was born on a farm in Duval County on April 19, 1857, lost both parents at twelve, and worked in a logging camp and as a farm hand, steamboat roustabout, steamboat pilot and owner of a steam tug. He was elected sheriff of Duval County and served on the Jacksonville city council, in the 1901 House of Representatives and on the state board of health from 1901 to 1904.

As governor, the department says, Broward unified the state's institutions of higher learning under a board of control and drained and developed portions of the Everglades. He lost a 1908 race for the U.S. Senate while governor, won the seat two years later, and died in Jacksonville on October 1, 1910, before taking office. The bridge's official name, which the JTA timeline uses, keeps his full name on the St. Johns crossing.

El Faro Memorial at Dames Point Park, a City of Jacksonville park at 9101 Dames Point Road, lies under the north approach to the bridge along the St. Johns River.

The city's parks page says the park opened in June 1989, the same year as the bridge, and received a major renovation in 1992-93. It describes the area as part of the original South Berlin and Dames Point communities, whose existence dates back to the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and says that in 2001 the Jacksonville Port Authority, whose land surrounds the park, built a new two-lane road linking the site with Dames Point Drive, insuring permanent access.

Listed amenities at the Jacksonville park include benches, car parking, a drinking fountain, fishing, picnic shelters and tables, restrooms, security lighting and wheelchair access.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, on the JTA history timeline, the City of Jacksonville parks page, the JAXPORT terminal page, NOAA's Coast Pilot 4 Chapter 9, the Florida Department of State governor biography and the UNF archive record.