Ribbon-cutting ceremony held Tuesday for Rocheport Bridge

New eastbound bridge along Interstate 70 will open to traffic by end of year

A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held Tuesday, Dec. 10 to celebrate the new Lance Corporal Leon Deraps I-70 Missouri River Bridge at Rocheport.

Gov. Mike Parson, Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, Aide to U.S. Rep. Sam Graves - Bryan Nichols spoke at the ceremony. Other state and local elected officials and local community leaders were recognized and thanked for their funding support of the project. Family members of the fallen Marine for whom the bridge is named attended the event on the nearly completed new eastbound I-70 bridge.

Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission (MHTC) Chairman W. Dustin Boatwright and MoDOT Director Ed Hassinger also spoke at the ceremony. They were joined by other current and past members of the MHTC as well as the bridge contractor, Lunda Construction, and its subcontractors, to celebrate this milestone.

The new bridges will each carry three lanes of traffic, linking the multiple projects in the Improve I-70 program, which will expand the interstate to three lanes across the state. These improvements were vital to the more than 37,000 vehicles, including 8,800 commercial vehicles, that use this Missouri River bridge crossing each day.

Construction on this $220 million project began in early 2022 and is on time to have eastbound traffic shifted to the new bridge in December 2024. Funding for the project came from several sources including the city of Boonville, the city of Columbia, Boone County, Cooper County and an $81.2 million INFRA grant, secured with assistance from Missouri U.S. Congressman Sam Graves.

For more information on the completion of this project, visit the Rocheport Bridge website. This page also features details about the bridge’s history, including photos from the old bridge's ribbon-cutting event in October 1960.

MoDOT's 2024 Annual Report now available

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