Lions Bridge

Newport News, Virginia

The Lions Bridge is located on land acquired and transformed by Archer Milton Huntington and his wife Anna Hyatt-Huntington. In 1930, Huntington acquired 800 acres of land and developed a natural park and a dam and began creating the Mariner's Museum, dedicated to Maritime history. Four stone lions, designed by Anna, the famed American sculpturist, were mounted on the ends of the dam in October 1932. At the far end of the bridge stands a live oak that was imported from the Huntington's Brookgreen Estate in South Carolina. Today, Brookgreen Estate is home to America's largest collection of figurative sculpture. The Lions Bridge offers breath taking views of the James River and overlooks Lake Maury named after the nineteenth-century Virginia oceanographer Commodore Matthew Fontaine Maury.