It always amazes me what kinds of projects it was actually possible to undertake and complete even just half a century ago.

If a middle aged billionaire wanted to do something similar they'd die old age before it ever made it out of the courtroom. You'd have to take long term inflation into account when making your cost estimates.

I remember as a teenager when this was all happening. The archives are paid only but Life Magazine had a big spread showing the bridge's re-dedication.

TV covered it and if my memory is correct 60 minutes interviewed McCulloch and covered his plans for Lake Havasu. Unfortunately their online archives don't start until the early seventies. The year the bridge was dedicated was the first year of the program.

What I find most interesting about this piece is the sum for which the property was sold.

> “Someone sensibly asked what they might get for [the bridge] and Ivan is recorded as saying, ‘one million’,” says Archie.

> “And they said, ‘one million dollars?’

> “Ivan said, ‘I’m talking about one million pounds.’ [Nearly three millions dollars at the time.] They sat up at that.”

What were the motivations for this asking price and how may they have been substantiated?

For reference, that's about $21m today.

Meanwhile the over land bridge being built down the street from, $800m. And I can almost guarantee it will be at least 20% over budget, because Miami. So closer to $1B

That inflation-corrected $21 million was only for materials, not even all of them, that had to be transported from Europe and put together again.

I had always conflated selling the London Bridge with "selling" the Brooklyn Bridge, as in "...and I've got a bridge to sell you": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Parker

Glad to hear this sale actually happened and worked out well for both parties!

Layout of this site is very hard to read on desktop.

You got voted down, but I've seen plenty of other sites with just as bad a layout discuss how terrible web 3.0 (or whatever we are calling it) has been for web design.

I felt like I was constantly looking through a pile of papers on a messy desk and I could never quite see clearly one photo at a time. It was irritating.

I feel like maybe if enough people complain about sites like these on HN, every time they come up, eventually someone will listen, and then we can go back to the good old days when no one hijacked the scrolling function to try to control your browsing experience.

Metaphorically, this is grabbing someone's face and making them look at something you are presenting. It's rude, and should only be used in life-critical situations.

I strongly prefer that my attention be led or suggested, and not heavy-handedly forced. This style of breaking text sections with photograph wipes makes me feel as though I am being forced to read the unholy hybrid of article and photo essay through a kaleidoscope.

But this is what reader mode is made for, right? Switching made me feel better immediately, but most of the pieces of the article were just gone. Missing photos; missing text. The only way to get the whole thing is to submerge your will and submit to the slideshow presentation.

I'd almost rather have them lay it out in a paged medium like an old-school magazine and present it in a PDF. I hate having my face grabbed.

Nothing wrong with speaking your mind. Someone has to go against the grain. the claim goes, you’re not contributing to conversion and I say, do we always have to contribute?! No. Downvote me, see how much I care :)

I actually enjoyed it. Scrolling down to different sections felt like a chapter in a book.

What a fascinating story!