London Sells London Bridge. Arizona Buys It.

London had found a customer.

On Thursday, 18 April 1968, an announcement revealed an unusual destination for London’s ageing bridge.

Arizona.

The nineteenth-century London Bridge could no longer adequately serve modern traffic and was being replaced.

That usually makes a bridge a demolition problem.

London had found a customer.

Entrepreneur Robert P. McCulloch was developing Lake Havasu City in the Arizona desert. He wanted something that would attract attention—and visitors—to the community.

A famous bridge from another continent offered certain advantages.

McCulloch’s purchase was announced on 18 April. The transaction solved the ownership question.

Moving it required considerably more work.

Workers dismantled and numbered the historic granite facing stones. These were shipped to the United States and transported to Arizona, where they were fitted around a new reinforced-concrete structure.

That distinction matters.

The entire old bridge was not lifted from the Thames and transplanted intact. Its historic exterior stonework became the face of a newly engineered bridge.

Then there was the matter of what it would cross.

The reconstruction took place on dry land. A channel was subsequently excavated beneath it, connecting with Lake Havasu and giving the imported landmark water to stand over.

The rebuilt bridge opened in 1971.

A persistent story claims McCulloch thought he was buying Tower Bridge, the London landmark with the famous towers. That is disputed folklore, not an established explanation for the purchase.

The documented transaction is strange enough without it.

London disposed of an outdated crossing.

Lake Havasu City acquired a landmark.

And a substantial piece of nineteenth-century British architecture began its second career in the Arizona desert.