The Board of Mayor and Aldermen will be submitting plans and an application to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History for approval to relocate the Fairground Street Bridge.

Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said the city will begin preparing the necessary information to send to state officials.

The decision to apply came after a meeting Friday between city officials, members of the Vicksburg Foundation for Historic Preservation and Archives and History officials that included a visit to the bridge.

City officials want to move the bridge to the new multi-use park on the farmers’ market site at Washington and Jackson streets and turn it into a museum.

State approval for any project involving the bridge is required because the structure is on the National Register of Historic places and a Mississippi landmark.

Jim Woodrich with Archives and History’s historic preservation division said filing the application and supporting documents are necessary to get state approval for the bridge project.

“Because it is a designated landmark, we need that paper trail,” he said. “We’ve seen it now, so we can talk about it. You send anything you can that will help others understand it and for our records.” He said state officials will review the plan to determine its feasibility.

“We’ll make a recommendation on what’s appropriate or any conditions we might have,” Woodrich said, adding the recommendation will be reviewed by a staff committee and then sent to Archives and History’s Board of Trustees for permit approval.

“It just takes a little time; we do this with every designated landmark in the state,” he was unable to say how long the process would take, but said the trustees meet every month.

Flaggs called the meeting “very productive. I think they’re very receptive to making it a museum and relocating it as to demolishing it. I’m very, very pleased with today.”

He said the board will issue a request for qualifications for a project engineer, “And see how much it will cost us.”

Flaggs in December said he wanted to demolish the bridge, calling it unsafe and a blight. He announced at a Jan. 7 board meeting he changed his mind and wanted to relocate the bridge to the park site.

He said he wanted to install a kiosk or informational tablets about the bridge, and add a marker identifying it as a National Historic Landmark. The Fairground Street Bridge is listed as the oldest standing bridge in the state.

Installed in 1895, the bridge provided access to Levee Street from the city’s garden district after railroad tracks were built in the 1800s.

The Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad, which owned the tracks at that time, installed the bridge as part of a deal with the city that allowed the company right-of-way through Vicksburg.