The Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge (also known as the Buzzards Bay Railroad Bridge), a vertical lift bridge

Lift bridge

A vertical-lift bridge or lift bridge is a type of movable bridge in which a span rises vertically while remaining parallel with the deck....

 in Bourne, Massachusetts

Bourne, Massachusetts

Bourne is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 18,721 at the 2000 census.For geographic and demographic information on specific parts of the town of Bourne, please see the articles on Bourne , Buzzards Bay, Monument Beach, Pocasset, Sagamore, and Sagamore...

 near Buzzards Bay

Buzzards Bay (bay)

Buzzards Bay is a bay of the Atlantic Ocean adjacent to the U.S. state of Massachusetts. It is approximately 28 miles long by 8 miles wide. It is a popular destination for fishing, boating, and tourism. Since 1914, Buzzards Bay has been connected to Cape Cod Bay by the Cape Cod Canal...

, carries railroad traffic across the Cape Cod Canal

Cape Cod Canal

The Cape Cod Canal is an artificial waterway traversing the narrow neck of land that joins Cape Cod to mainland Massachusetts.Part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, the canal is roughly 17.4 miles long and connects Cape Cod Bay in the north to Buzzards Bay in the south...

, connecting Cape Cod

Cape Cod

Cape Cod, often referred to locally as simply the Cape, is a cape in the easternmost portion of the state of Massachusetts, in the Northeastern United States...

 with the rest of Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

, USA

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. While most lift bridges are kept down for land traffic to cross and lifted up to allow boat traffic to pass under, The Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge is one of only a few lift bridges in the United States kept in an up position and only lowered for the occasional land traffic.
The bridge was constructed beginning in 1933 by the Public Works Administration

Public Works Administration

The Public Works Administration , part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was created by the National Industrial Recovery Act in June 1933 in response to the Great Depression...

 from a design by firms Parsons, Klapp, Brinckerhoff, and Douglas as well as Mead and White (both of New York), for the United States Army Corps of Engineers

United States Army Corps of Engineers

The United States Army Corps of Engineers is a federal agency and a major Army command made up of some 38,000 civilian and military personnel, making it the world's largest public engineering, design and construction management agency...

, which operates both the bridge and the canal.