Varina-Enon Bridge

Varina-Enon Bridge is a cable-stayed bridge which carries Interstate 295 across the James River near Dutch Gap between Henrico County near Richmond and Chesterfield County near Hopewell, Virginia. It was opened to traffic in July 1990.

The Varina-Enon Bridge has six lanes (three lanes each way) with full right and left shoulders, with 150 feet (46 m) of vertical navigational clearance and 630 feet (190 m) of horizontal navigational clearance. The bridge spans the shipping channel that leads to the Port of Richmond. The overall bridge length is 4,680 feet (1,430 m).

The bridge is owned and maintained by the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT). It was named for Varina, the original county seat of Henrico County which was located near the north end, and Enon, a small community near the south end in Chesterfield County.

This bridge was also affected by the 1993 tornado that destroyed half of the Historic District of Petersburg, a Wal-Mart in nearby Colonial Heights, and damaged portions of the city of Hopewell.

The design was selected because a high level was needed to clear a shipping channel, but there was a strong desire to avoid a drawbridge configuration following the collision of the SS Marine Floridian into the Benjamin Harrison Bridge at Jordan Point, a few miles downstream, in 1977. That complex bridge structure was out of service for over a year. At 157 feet (48 m) tall, the Varina-Enon Bridge was the tallest bridge in Virginia when it opened; it is now third-tallest, behind the 225-foot (69 m) US 460/Corridor Q bridge over Grassy Creek connecting Buchanan County with Pike County, Kentucky (opened in 2016) and the 175-foot (53 m) Wilson Creek Bridge carrying the Virginia Smart Road over Wilson Creek in Montgomery County (opened in 2001).

It is similar in design to the Senator William V. Roth Jr. Bridge in Delaware, which was completed 5 years after the Varina-Enon Bridge.

Eastern Virginia has long been a habitat for endangered birds, notably eagles and peregrine falcons. The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) has come to learn that some of its high bridge structures closely match their preferred nesting environment on cliff faces and in high trees.

In an award-winning program, nesting boxes for these rare birds were established in several bridges. Bridge pairs now represent approximately 30 percent of the Virginia peregrine falcon population. In a major victory for the endangered species, and VDOT's environmental efforts, in the spring of 2003, nearly a dozen peregrine falcon chicks were hatched. Most were taken from their nesting boxes on various VDOT bridges for banding and release to their natural habitat.