The bridge meant to reopen half of Denali is running behind, new permits suggest

The bridge being built to reconnect the Denali Park Road, severed by a landslide that has cut off the western half of the park since 2021, appears to be running well behind schedule. Federal officials once expected it finished by July 1, 2026, a date that has now passed. But the contractor is seeking staging space along the Parks Highway through the end of 2028, and nothing in the record explains the gap.

The permits at issue would let the project truck about 600,000 pounds of structural steel to two gravel pits near the park starting next month, and hold staging and equipment yards there for the next two years. That timeline, stretching well past the official completion date, is the clearest public sign that the work is taking longer than planned.

The bridge replaces a stretch of road lost to the Pretty Rocks landslide at Mile 45.4 of the park road. The ground there had crept for years, but the movement accelerated sharply, from inches per year before 2014 to as much as two-thirds of an inch per hour in 2021, when the Park Service gave up and closed the road west of the slide. That closure cut off vehicle access to the park's interior, including Kantishna and Wonder Lake.

Construction began in 2023 on a roughly 475-foot single-span steel truss bridge, part of a contract now valued at about $208 million. When it opens, it will restore the road link across the slide.

For now, the delay carries a cost for the park. Federal materials acknowledge that the closures and traffic control tied to the work affect visitors, tour operators and local businesses that depend on access to the road, though no operator is named in the permit record.