When people in the United States today hear the term "London Bridge," they are most likely to think of one of the most peculiar sights anywhere within the United States that of the London Bridge in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Surrounded by faked-up Tudor buildings and busloads of tourists, the large bridge is dwarfed by the majesty of the desert Southwest. The entire enterprise stands as a monument to a deep human appreciation for irony, for what else could explain the immense cost and energy that went into transporting such an immense structure such a long way for so very little purpose.
But this peculiar structure in the desert is in fact not the real London Bridge at all (if any bridge can in fact lay claim to that title, which seems unlikely), but the New London Bridge, designed in 1831 by the Scottish engineer John Rennie a bridge that became quickly antiquated when the car forever changed traffic patterns in England's capital city, prompting the construction of the bridge that is still used.
Old London Bridge is not enshrined in the Arizona desert, nor anywhere else in the world. In 1832, the historic stones that had been the bridge for more than six centuries were torn apart and scattered throughout the island, to end up in garden walkways and rural walls. It was in part because Old London Bridge was so thoroughly destroyed that the New London Bridge was saved and moved (Elmer, 1973, p. 2). It does seem a poor sort of thanks to give to a structure that was for so many years vital to the economy of the city as well as to its self-image. Perhaps because of its eventual dissolution, today we tend to remember the first lines of the famous nursery rhyme that tells us that "London Bridge is falling down" and forget the later words of the rhyme that promise that the people of London will "Build it up with stone so strong that it will last for ages long." But perhaps it is indeed better that the stones once gathered...