Today, the Luitpold Bridge connects the Kirchberg district with Bundesstraße 21. story
Where the Luitpold Bridge is located today, there was a crossing over the Saalach long before that, which was first mentioned in a document in 1050. The important salt trade route ran across the bridge to the south and east. However, since the Long Bridge was repeatedly damaged or even destroyed by floods, it was replaced by a stone arch bridge in 1889/1890.
However, the new Luitpold Bridge did not guarantee that it would survive strong floods without damage. On September 14, 1899, part of the bridge and the drift systems were destroyed in a flood.
After the new Saalach power plant was built in 1912, the construction of the dam also reduced the risk of flooding. Inevitably, the time of the Holztrift to Bad Reichenhall ended with the construction of the power station, the Trift canals were filled in, the bridge over the Trift Canal as an extension of the Luitpold Bridge was demolished.
On the afternoon of May 3, 1945, the Luitpold Bridge was blown up by SS pioneers, although the Allied troops were already a few kilometers from Reichenhall on both sides of the Saalach at that time. Since Reichenhall was then supplied with electricity by the Saalach power plant, the important power lines between the power plant and Reichenhall were also interrupted when the bridge was blown up. As a replacement, pieces of cable from Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden were used. Liberated forced laborers had full coils of cable run down the steep mountainsides. A few days after the liberation of Reichenhall and Berchtesgaden, employees of the Bad Reichenhall municipal utilities began, with the approval of the Allies, to cut off usable pieces, to salvage them from the mountain forest and thus to supplement the destroyed lines in Reichenhall and at the Luitpold Bridge. The bridge itself was also rebuilt after a short time and opened to traffic.
Until the construction of the 2101 state road and the Kretabrücke, the Luitpoldbrücke was the only connection between the city and Kirchberg and Karlstein for vehicles and wagons. In the late 1980s, the bridge was extensively renovated and the old wooden railing was replaced by an iron version.
Translated by Google •
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