Victoria Falls Bridge

Interesting facts

Work began by firing a rocket across the gorge with a light line, which pulled ever heavier ropes until a steel cable could carry an electric cableway for materials.

When the arch halves met on 31 March 1905 the heat-swollen steel would not fit; at dawn on 1 April, cooled overnight, it joined perfectly.

The arch was built out from both sides of the gorge at once as two cantilevers, held back by twelve steel wire cables anchored in tunnels cut into the rock.

Cecil Rhodes, who dreamed up the crossing, died in 1902 and never saw a single girder of it go up.

The man who opened the bridge, Sir George Darwin, was a Cambridge astronomer and a son of Charles Darwin.

The Cleveland Bridge Company won the contract in May 1903 for about 72,000 pounds, and the site was surveyed that September.

At its peak the job employed around 400 African labourers alongside some thirty skilled European engineers and craftsmen.

In 1975 failed peace talks over Rhodesia were held in a railway carriage parked on the bridge, straddling the border, and lasted about nine and a half hours.

A toll was charged on the bridge at first but was abolished in 1906, the year after it opened.

The American Society of Civil Engineers has named it an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.

Why it is worth it

The Victoria Falls Bridge crosses the Zambezi just below the falls, in the gorge into which the river turns after plunging over the falls. A single steel arch about 156 metres across springs from wall to wall of the Second Gorge and carries the deck roughly 128 metres above the low-water level; from the deck you look upstream towards the spray clouds of the falls and straight down onto the churning river. The bridge sits exactly on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, and it still carries railway, road and foot traffic between the two countries — it is their only rail link.

The idea belonged to Cecil Rhodes, who wanted a railway from the Cape to Cairo; according to a well-known story he asked for the crossing to be placed so close to the falls that passing trains would catch their spray. The bridge was designed by George Andrew Hobson of Sir Douglas Fox and Partners, with the stress calculations by Ralph Freeman, who later became the principal designer of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The steelwork was made by the Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company in Darlington, England, shipped to Africa via Beira in Mozambique and assembled across the gorge. Construction took only about fourteen months, and the bridge was opened on 12 September 1905 by the scientist Sir George Darwin.

Today the bridge is a destination in its own right. Guided heritage tours lead visitors along a walkway beneath the deck, among the steel members of the arch, and a small free museum with a café on the Zambian side tells the story of its construction. From the middle of the span, a bungee jump drops about 111 metres towards the Zambezi.

Getting there

The bridge lies about 3 km from the town of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe and about 10 km from Livingstone in Zambia; Livingstone's Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula International Airport (LVI) is about 12.5 km away. Both towns are linked to the bridge by road.

From the encyclopaedia

The Victoria Falls Bridge crosses the Zambezi River just below the Victoria Falls and is built over the Second Gorge of the falls. As the river forms the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia, the bridge links the two countries and has border posts on the approaches to both ends, at the towns of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, and Livingstone, Zambia.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Victoria Falls Bridge

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia