Belize City Swing Bridge.
This bridge connects the north and south sections of Belize City, stretching across Haulover Creek, which is an inlet of the Belize River.
It was built in Liverpool (England) in 1922, and brought to Belize City by an American company, where it was installed in 1923, replacing several wooden bridges that had been there since the mid-1800s.
The original bridge connecting the two parts of Belize City (1859).
The Belize City Swing Bridge is the oldest swing bridge in Central America, and one of the few manually-operated swing bridges in the world that is still used. It needs at least four men to crank it by hand, and it takes over an hour.
The reason it was built specifically as a swing bridge was so that it could be cranked out of the way to allow fishing sail-boats with tall masts to pass by and continue upriver to trade. Traffic on Haulover Creek isn't so heavy these days, so it's only manually opened by special request.
Haulover Creek got its name because cattlemen had to pull their animals over the creek with ropes, which was referred to as “hauling over the creek”.
