Brazil built a bridge in 1926 that cost about two full years of an entire state's budget. Then it stopped maintaining it, and the repair reached a point where a state prosecutor said the same money could have built four modern bridges with double the traffic capacity. In the 1920s, Florianópolis was an island city of about 40,000 people with no road to the mainland. Everyone crossed by ferry, and a windy day could cut the city off completely. Other towns in Santa Catarina were pushing to move the state capital inland to Lages. Governor Hercílio Luz decided a bridge would end that argument for good. The state could not pay for one, so it borrowed from banks in New York in 1919 and again in 1922. The first bank went bankrupt, and a legal maneuver left Santa Catarina responsible for that failed bank's debts too. Two American engineers, Holton Robinson and David Steinman, drew the design, and the American Bridge Company built it. Every piece of steel came from the United States, roughly 5,000 tons of it. The bridge does not hang from twisted cables like most suspension bridges. It hangs from flat steel bars pinned end to end, like a bicycle chain. Hercílio Luz was dying of stomach cancer, so on October 8th, 1924, an 18 meter wooden model of his bridge was set up in the center of Florianópolis for a symbolic opening. He died twelve days later, at 64. The real bridge opened on a rainy afternoon, May 13th, 1926, and carried his name instead of its planned one, the Independence Bridge. When it opened, it was the longest chain of its kind ever hung. On December 15th, 1967, the Silver Bridge over the Ohio River collapsed at rush hour and 46 people died, after one of those steel bars failed. It had been built by the same company, on the same idea. Engineers said Florianópolis should cut heavy traffic over its bridge. In 1969 the state paved the wooden deck with asphalt instead, adding hundreds of tons of dead weight while upkeep stayed poor. An inspection on December 3rd, 1981 found the support bars badly corroded, some having lost up to 30 percent of their steel. A crack about five centimeters wide turned up in one bar near the top of a tower. The bridge was closed on January 22nd, 1982, while carrying almost 44 percent of all vehicle traffic between the island and the mainland. It reopened in 1988 for pedestrians, bikes, motorcycles and horse carts, shut again in 1991, and stayed shut for 28 years. The American loans had been paid off in 1978, four years before the bridge closed. A state legislature inquiry later counted more than R$1 billion in contracts signed on the bridge since 1980, with R$688 million actually committed. It reopened on December 30th, 2019, and a crowd of about 200,000 came through. The money Santa Catarina saved by not maintaining the bridge came due anyway, and much of it was paid by people who had never once crossed it. The Hercílio Luz turned 100 this May, and it is still the largest eyebar chain suspension bridge standing anywhere in the world. – at Florianópolis, Brazil