London Sold Its Bridge to Arizona — But Only the Outside

London Bridge — not Tower Bridge, the plain one with five granite arches — stands in the Arizona desert. In 1968 Robert McCulloch, the chainsaw maker, bought it. But London didn't sell him the bridge. It sold him the outside: about 10,000 granite facing blocks, less than a tenth of its weight. To give it something to cross, he planned one line on the map — a channel about a mile long across a peninsula on Lake Havasu. That line started a fight. The cornerstone went down on dry sand, and the water came last. Chapters 0:00 London Bridge, in the desert 0:46 Why a chainsaw maker wanted it 1:17 London's bridge for sale 2:03 One line across the neck 2:28 The lake was born in a fight 2:53 A fight over one line 4:17 The skin crosses the ocean 4:39 A jigsaw on dry land 5:18 Why wait to dig? 5:37 Letting the lake in 6:20 A river under a bridge Timeline 1825: The first stone of John Rennie's London Bridge is laid at the bottom of the Thames, inside a cofferdam, some forty feet below high water. The bridge opens in 1831. Nov. 1934: Arizona's governor, B. B. Moeur, declares martial law to stop work on Parker Dam and calls out a one-boat "navy." The dam is finished in 1938; Lake Havasu fills behind it. 1963: Robert McCulloch buys a large stretch of desert beside Lake Havasu and starts a town. April 1968: The City of London accepts McCulloch's bid of $2,460,000 for the bridge's granite facing. April-Sept. 1968: Arizona's state parks board objects to cutting the channel across state park land and suggests Thompson Bay instead. Sept. 20, 1968: A deal. Sept. 23, 1968: London's Lord Mayor lays the cornerstone, on dry sand. 1969-1970: New concrete arches go up over shaped mounds of sand; the old facing stones go back on, one numbered stone at a time. After the bridge is finished, the sand is dug out from under it and the lake let in. The channel comes to be known as the Little Thames. A USGS map printed in 1973 shows the island, the channel and the words "London Bridge." Satellite imagery (lake views): Sentinel-2 cloudless – https://s2maps.eu by EOX IT Services GmbH (Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016), licensed under CC BY 4.0. Photo of the bridge under construction, March 1971: "ProveIt" via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.... Shown unaltered, framed as a card. Photo of stone 5G78: Skarg via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.... Framed as a card. Aerial imagery: USDA NAIP via USGS The National Map. Topographic maps: U.S. Geological Survey (1950, and the 1970 survey printed in 1973). The Evening Star (Washington), Nov. 12, 1934, and The Washington Daily News, Nov. 13, 1934: Library of Congress, Chronicling America. London Bridge, c. 1900 (from John L. Stoddard's lectures) and 1927 (Stockholm Transport Museum, no known restrictions); Tower Bridge photochrom, 1890-1900 (Detroit Publishing Co., Library of Congress); "Old London Bridge - sketched on the spot," William Alfred Delamotte, March 30, 1832; "The Opening of New London Bridge, 1 August 1831," Clarkson Stanfield (Royal Collection) — all via Wikimedia Commons. London Bridge in Lake Havasu City, Nov. 27, 2025: Guninvalid via Wikimedia Commons (CC0). Southwest and route maps: NASA Earth Observatory (Blue Marble). State outlines: Natural Earth. The painted scenes (the outboard test, the buyers' airliner, the feared amusement park, the cactus in Trafalgar Square, the 1825 cofferdam, the 1968 cornerstone, the numbered stones in the desert, the one-boat "navy," the committee room and the soot on new stone) are AI-generated illustrations, not photographs. No real person's face is shown. The soldiers, people and town dots on the maps are markers, not real counts. The sea route and the truck route are drawn to show the direction of the journey, not the exact track. The yellow line on the 1950 map is the channel's later path, drawn by us. The quote cards are typeset by us and quote the sources named on each card. Historic American Engineering Record, "London Bridge" (HAER AZ-57), 1999. Associated Press reports, April 19, April 23, July 16, Sept. 19 and Sept. 21, 1968; Arizona Daily Star, Dec. 20, 1970; NEA, Dec. 14, 1969. BBC (2018) on how London Bridge came to Arizona, including Archie Galloway's account and Bobbi Holmes's line. Ivan Luckin interview, May 6, 1983 (Watford Observer, 2002); History.com on McCulloch's bid. The Evening Star, Nov. 12, 1934; The Washington Daily News, Nov. 13, 1934; Stamford Mercury, June 24, 1825. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Parker Dam history; U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census (Lake Havasu City). Distances measured on USGS/NAIP imagery. #LondonBridge #LakeHavasu #WhoDrewTheLine