Red Arrow Highway Phantom Bridge, Benton Heights, Michigan

The Red Arrow Highway Bridge has an interesting history, although I was unable to find out the entire story on the bridge. To begin with I’m not sure when the bridge was built but information indicates it was sometime in the early 1900s. Looking at this map from 1887 it appears that as the road headed west, shortly after crossing the bridge it made a hard left hand turn and then a 90º right hand turn taking the road back to it’s previous trajectory heading southwest.

In 1922 the road was realigned and the bridge was bypassed. In 1993, the 1922 bridge was replaced with the current span at a cost of about $300,000.00.

The Red Arrow Highway Bridge is now privately owned by Don Schultz who has done some work on the bridge, most notably the 4 ft tall posts with the shards of rock embedded in the cement. The bridge itself is 28 feet long and spans Blue Creek.

As a side note, the Red Arrow Highway was originally known as US 12 which was established in 1926. In 1952, US 12 was dedicated to the 32nd Infantry Division. The division used a red arrow as its insignia to symbolize how they pierced the German Hindenburg Line during World War I and Japanese defenses during World War II. The soldiers who composed the division were drawn from the Michigan and Wisconsin National Guards. After other proposals failed, US 12 was named the Red Arrow Highway on August 30, 1952, and dedicated on March 22, 1953.