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While Big Gretch’s “Fix the damn roads!” mandate has brought an upswing in road road construction projects all over Michigan, anybody who regularly commutes (that’s a thing, believe it or not) from one of the state’s two peninsulas to the other will tell you that maintenance on the Mackinac Bridge has been a thing for much longer than that. And now there’s an upside—you know, besides that whole upkeep-makes-the-bridge-not-fall thing. Bor-ing.
In this case, repairs to the deck of the bridge (which connects Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas) created an opportunity for infrastructure geeks to own a little piece of highway history. The Mackinac Bridge Authority is auctioning off panels of the bridge’s original metal decking via GovDeals. According to The Detroit News, the Authority has been replacing them at a rate of about 20 per year for the past 30 years, and only made them available for sale to the public after fans (for lack of a better word) discovered that they were simply being scrapped.
The drainage grates help keep the road surface clear of water and snow, and as you might expect from 70-year-old steel that has reached the end of its useful service life, it’s in pretty poor shape. It was also originally covered in lead-based paint; the bridge was completed in the 1950s, after all. It was the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time, too.
Jerry Perez/The Drive
Even if that doesn’t deter you, do note that this isn’t the sort of thing you’ll be able to haul back home in the trunk of your economy car; each section is nearly 40 feet long and weighs about as much as a Ford Explorer (about 4,500 pounds). The Bridge Authority will cut your section in two and help you load both sections into (onto, probably) your transport vehicle, but anything beyond that is your responsibility.
The Authority has several sections listed on the auction site, all expiring next Monday (Nov. 17, 2025). If the decking gets too rich for your blood and you simply want a little piece of Mackinac history, they also appear to have used toll tokens for sale; those will definitely fit in the back of your Corolla.
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Byron is an editor at The Drive with a keen eye for infrastructure, sales and regulatory stories.
