The Merrill P. Barber Bridge — Vero Beach, Florida

The Merrill P. Barber Bridge is the fixed concrete arch bridge that carries State Road 60 over the Indian River and the Intracoastal Waterway between mainland Vero Beach and the barrier island. According to AARoads, SR 60 heads 1.42 miles west from SR A1A across the Merrill P. Barber Bridge to Indian River Boulevard, where the highway turns south toward 20th Street and downtown. The current span was dedicated on February 18, 1995.

The name covers two bridges. The first Merrill P. Barber Bridge, opened in 1951, was a low drawbridge with a steel bascule span that landed on the causeway now called Royal Palm Pointe. The 1995 bridge kept the name but moved the mainland landing north, ending the openings that once stopped SR 60 traffic for boats. Both followed Vero's original 1920 wooden bridge, the first crossing of the Indian River anywhere near the town. This page covers the SR 60 crossing only; the Alma Lee Loy Bridge at 17th Street, a separate structure, opened in 1979.

The state historical marker titled THE BRIDGES records that a parade of Model T automobiles crossed the first bridge to span the Indian River on Labor Day 1920, which made Vero the first community with a bridge to Orchid Island. Built of sabal palm pilings and rough-cut planking, it started from a causeway of dredged fill on the mainland and curved in the middle, where the bridge tender's house stood. The tender opened the metal swing span by hand for boats, and tolls ranged from 5 cents for a pedestrian to 35 cents for a two-ton delivery truck.

The Indian River Guardian adds that the Vero span was then the only bridge from mainland to barrier island between Daytona and Palm Beach, and that Irene Young, wife of Mayor A.W. Young, cut its ribbon in 1920. A 2013 Guardian oral history describes a bridge tender who, from 1938, ran the hand-cranked drawspan on the town's wooden bridge across the Indian River and lived with his family in a small house on the bridge, closing the traffic gates at either end of the draw whenever a boat passed at night.

Merrill P. Barber was a Vero Beach businessman and officeholder honored by the state's Great Floridians 2000 program. Born in 1910, he co-owned one of the first growers supply businesses in Vero Beach from 1930, helped found the Indian River Citrus Bank in 1935 and served as its president from 1948 to 1975. As Mayor of Vero Beach from 1947 to 1949 he negotiated the contract that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to spring training at the former naval air station.

The bridge link is spelled out in the same entry: as a member of the Florida State Road Board, Barber brought road improvements to Vero Beach and Indian River County, including the first modern bridge across the Indian River. He was elected to the Florida Senate in 1953 and served two terms, and he died in 1985. His Great Floridian plaque hangs at Vero Beach City Hall, 1053 20th Place. The bridges marker credits the 1950s crossing to successful lobbying by State Senator Merrill P. Barber, a Vero Beach resident.

The second Vero crossing reused the 1920 approach. The marker states that the new bridge was built on an extension of the dredged-fill causeway as its bridgehead, was designed in the Mid-Century Modern style, and had a steel bascule span with a booth for the bridge tender. A grand opening was held in 1951, and Irene Young cut the ribbon again in March 1951, three decades after opening the wooden bridge. The Guardian's 2013 oral history notes that the concrete replacement had an automatic drawspan, unlike the hand-cranked draw it superseded.

Groundwork for the crossing began earlier. A 2013 Indian River Guardian history of Vero Beach credits Mayor Alex MacWilliam Sr. with persuading the Army Corps of Engineers, while it widened the Intracoastal Waterway after World War II, to realign the channel in anticipation of the future Merrill P. Barber Bridge, and with setting aside state money for the original bridge as a legislator. AARoads notes that this earlier crossing angled southwest from Riverside North Park to Royal Palm Pointe.

In the 1990s, the marker explains, a new mainland approach was established to the north and the Barber drawbridge was replaced with a concrete arch bridge. The Guardian dates the change to 1995, when a modern concrete arch bridge carrying the same name replaced the 1951 span. The second Barber bridge is fixed, with no moving span, and stands tall enough that the Atlantic Ocean is clearly visible to the east from its crest over the Indian River.

Shifting the landing north freed the old causeway. According to the marker, the former causeway and bridgehead became Royal Palm Pointe, a residential and commercial corridor with a city park on the river, and AARoads identifies Royal Palm Pointe east as the former alignment of SR 60. On March 23, 2019, the Historical Society of Indian River County unveiled the bridges marker at the eastern end of Royal Palm Pointe Park, part of a county marker program that then counted 22 markers in Indian River County.

The Florida Department of Transportation maintains the SR 60 crossing. In 2013 Vero News reported a $1.55 million Merrill Barber Bridge maintenance and rehabilitation project on State Road 60 from Indian River Boulevard to Riverside Park Drive, covering repairs, cleaning and painting. As part of that work, the fishing pier under the east end of the Barber Bridge closed starting September 9, 2013, for ADA upgrades and surface repairs expected to take up to 45 days.

The western landing at Indian River Boulevard drew a later safety project. Vero Beach 32963 reported in January 2025 that a $3.7 million FDOT project was under way at the western foot of the Merrill Barber Bridge, with Ranger Construction Industries extending the northbound right-turn lane, adding a second southbound left-turn lane, and installing new signals, curbs, a retaining wall, railings and LED lighting for the intersection and bridge entrance. FDOT said 5-foot bicycle lanes with one stripe fit the space, and crews coordinated closures with work on the 17th Street Bridge. In September 2013 the Barber Bridge also served as one of eight causeway sites for the Hands Across The Lagoon rally.