Here is a fun fact to stick in the back of your mind for trivia night or to use as an interesting ice breaker: the Amazon River has no bridges. None. Zero. Zilch. That is in spite of the fact that the Amazon is 4,345 miles long.
The Amazon has a river basin that covers 2.7 million square miles. It has the highest flow and discharge rates out of any river on Earth. It runs through multiple countries and dumps into the Atlantic Ocean. In all of that there is not a single bridge that crosses the river at any point. You cannot drive over the Amazon River, even if you wanted to.
Why is it that the Amazon has no bridges when other smaller rivers have dozens or even hundreds?
Geography and Economics
The Amazon River is one of the most remote rivers on Earth. It plunges from a source that is nestle high in the mountains at nearly 18,000 feet and then runs through one of the largest and thickest jungles found anywhere. The result is, there are not very many paved modern roads that run along the Amazon.
In fact, if you take a quick glance at the map, there are only a handful of towns and cities that are even large enough to register that are located on the banks of the Amazon.
So the Amazon is remote, so are a lot of other rivers. Why not just one bridge? A single bridge.
Current and Future Projects
There are a couple of bridges that span Amazon tributary rivers. One such bridge is located in Manaus, the largest city along the Amazon. But the bridge doesn’t cross the main expanse of the river. There is another bridge crossing a large Amazon tributary in Peru.
President Bolsonaro of Brazil has repeatedly said he wants to build a bridge over the Amazon but detractors say it would be for his legacy and serve no real purpose. No progress has been made on the Brazilian Amazon bridge proposal.
In fact, every bridge proposal targeting the Amazon has stalled and gotten nowhere. No one has even attempted to break ground which shows how stiff the headwinds are to such a project. Many bridges has been dreamed up but so far none have become reality.
It is odd to think that in 2022, over a hundred years since people dug out the Panama and Suez Canals, no one has managed to build a bridge across the Amazon.
Conclusion
Resistance to bridging the Amazon can be summed up in this way.
Too remote
Too expensive
No public support
And that is it.
