London Bridge's Home on the Range

It was the American yen for famous British artifacts that brought the Queen Mary to Long Beach, Calif., as a floating museum. Last week the same yen gave London Bridge an even more improbable future home: the Arizona desert. For $2,460,000, California-based McCulloch Oil Corp. purchased the 136-year-old River Thames span from the City of London. The company will reassemble the 1,005-ft. structure over a canal at Lake Havasu City, a resort, light-industry and retirement town (pop.

3,000) that it is building on the east bank of the Colorado River, 235 air miles east of Los Angeles.

Over the centuries there have been six London Bridges; the one that Mc Culloch bought is only the latest to follow the nursery rhyme and come "falling down." The first span to have its destruction commemorated in song was wrecked in a raid by Olaf the Norwegian in 1014. London decided a year ago to replace the present bridge because it was not only too small to accommodate today's traffic, but was sinking into the riverbed at a rate of 1 in. every eight years. Plans for a new bridge on the old site are already under way. And while people and cars still travel the ancient span, workmen have begun the three-year task of dismantling its 130,000 tons of granite--carefully numbering each stone so U.S. builders can solve the giant jigsaw puzzle and put it back together. In addition to the purchase price, McCulloch figures that it will cost at least another $3,000,000 to transport and rebuild its prize. To give the bridge a suitable setting, the company will dredge a mile-long cut across the neck of a Lake Havasu City peninsula that juts out into the 45-mile-long lake behind Parker Dam, surround the area with a golf course, marina, motels and inns.

"It would be cheaper to build a brand-new bridge," admits McCulloch President C. V. Wood Jr., "but that wouldn't have tourist appeal." In fact, when the bridge is up in 1971, Wood confidently expects the investment to help the town draw 4.5 million tourists a year--ten times the number that visited Lake Havasu City last year.

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