‘Love locks’ being placed on Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza bridge

love locks

The European tradition of “love locks” apparently has made its way to Tulsa and Route 66.

KOTV in Tulsa reports a few dozen “love locks” or “love padlocks” have been placed in recent years over the Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza over Southwest Boulevard (aka Route 66) in Tulsa near the Arkansas River.

The gist is a couple engraves or writes their names or mottoes on a lock, fastens it to a bridge and throws away the key. It’s a symbol of an unbreakable bond — at least until someone with a stout pair of boltcutters comes along.

Here’s the station’s report:

NewsOn6.com – Tulsa, OK – News, Weather, Video and Sports – KOTV.com |

According to a Wikipedia page about the phenomenon, the love-locks phenomenon dates back at least 100 years, to a Serbian tale from about World War I at the Most Ljubavi pedestrian bridge in the town of Vrnjacka Banja:

A local schoolmistress named Nada, who was from Vrnjačka Banja, fell in love with a Serbian officer named Relja. After they committed to each other, Relja went to war in Greece where he fell in love with a local woman from Corfu. As a consequence, Relja and Nada broke off their engagement. Nada never recovered from that devastating blow, and after some time she died due to heartbreak from her unfortunate love.

As young women from Vrnjačka Banja wanted to protect their own loves, they started writing down their names, with the names of their loved ones, on padlocks and affixing them to the railings of the bridge where Nada and Relja used to meet.

I’ve seen no estimates of how many locks now are on the Most Ljubavi bridge, but it appears to be in the thousands.

Love locks, however, didn’t become popular until about 15 years ago in Europe. A 2006 book and film, “I Want You,” by Italian author Federico Moccia sparked the love locks at the 2,100-year-old Ponte Milvio bridge in Rome.

The craze has spread to France, Germany, Russia, South Korea, China, Czech Republic and, finally, the United States. One bridge railing in Paris became so overwhelmed with the weight of thousands of padlocks, however, it collapsed into the river.

Since the love-locks thing has gone on at the Tulsa overpass since at least 2015, it seems no one with the city is in any hurry to remove them. And there’s probably no harm, as long as there aren’t so many locks that it begins to compromise the structural integrity of the fence to which they’re fastened.

Based on some internet sleuthing, it doesn’t seem love locks are on the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge in St. Louis. But then again, the bridge is so long and large, a few could be done without anyone noticing.

(Screen capture of one of the love locks on the Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza bridge from the KOTV report)

9 thoughts on “‘Love locks’ being placed on Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza bridge

  1. Two years ago, when we began our Rt. 66 tour in Santa Monica, we noticed a city worker cutting padlocks off the pedestrian bridge from the park to the beach. I wrote about our conversation in our blog post in the Santa Monica articlet at http://www.gettinourkicks.com. He had no idea what the locks were about. Has anyone been back since to see if there are more there?

  2. I forget where, but the local council removed hundrerds or thousands of padlocks from one bridge, because the number was creating a risk of damage to the structure. Yellow ribbons are much lighter!

  3. So it’s like a local merchant supported form of mild vandalism? I mean, someone is selling and engraving those locks. And a Master lock that size, engraved, can’t be cheap. Then the tax payers get to pay someone to stand there cutting them off. Brilliant.

    1. Any enterprising town council would invite tenders from private companies to do the removal at no cost to the council, with the value of the scrap metal making it the remover’s worthwhile.

    1. As I said before, get the city council to award a contract to anyone willing to remove at their own expense – and keep the profit from selling the scrap from – all such “love locks”.

      Being 2017, such removal will offend someone. And the removers will have to be ready to withstand verbal and perhaps even physical abuse. Such is life today.

  4. Awww come on guys, where’s your romantic spirit? Why not embrace the tradition? Think of the added traffic of a whole new demographic that does not/may not know much about Rt 66. Instead of focusing on the negative, why not “hang a lantern on it,” as they say and enjoy the next 50 years of good commerce and then deal with it in a more positive way? Why not use every means possible to promote the Mother Road?

    1. “Embrace the tradition”? Just how old and how commercial does something have to be to make it traditional. Think of Christmas 2016 style.

      And, yes, bridges have been compromised by the weight of thousands of so-called love locks.

      As for “the next 50 years of good commerce”, how is that money has to be the be all in so much of life these days? Behind almost everything to do with promoting Route 66 is eating, drinking and “buying the merchandise”. But isn’t that 2017 all over? Why not just drive the road and enjoy the natural scenery?

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