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Henley Bridge Shines Brightest, Boldest Orange Yet

On Friday, Sept. 12, 2025 - with ESPN's "College GameDay" crew arriving in town for Saturday's Vols-Dawgs showdown - the Henley Bridge debuted its all-time orange-iest best.

The 180 Henley Bridge deck lights were subtly orange and white, as usual. But new lights cannon-blasted thousands of watts of in-your-face orange color onto the undercarriage of the bridge.

The "extra boost" to the downtown Vol vibe, as Mayor Indya Kincannon put it, was a welcome addition. But ultimately, UT was only able to take the No. 6-ranked Bulldogs into overtime, falling just short of the big upset.

Look for the bolder, brighter lighting to be on display on game days throughout the season. There will be different variations of orange and white, much to the delight of Vol Navy boaters and the big joyful crowds of rollicking UT fans.

"We hope this dramatic new orange illumination over the Tennessee River, adjacent to Neyland Stadium, adds to the fun and rich traditions enjoyed by the best fans in college football," Mayor Kincannon said.

Years ago, the City tried in vain to enhance the celebratory lighting on the Henley Bridge. (Think: How orange can you go for a showdown weekend with an SEC arch rival?)

The existing technology at the time for the street-level deck lighting held up fairly well against the elements - for awhile. (The decorative deck lighting eventually wore down and was discontinued in 2018 but returned with better technology, and brighter lights, in 2024.)

However, the options previously available to light the below-deck lower bridge paled in comparison (pun intended).

Rather than a robust Vol orange, the weak illumination from just a few years back made the underneath pillars of the bridge appear a pink peachy color. So the lights weren't activated.

Logan Haynes works to perfect the new colors for the Henley Bridge lights.

Logan Haynes works to perfect the new colors for the Henley Bridge lights.

Technologically speaking, 2025 is light years ahead of 2018 (again - pun intended).

"The new lights are about three times brighter than the old ones," says Logan Haynes, one of the City Engineering Department's Signal and Lighting Coordinators.

"Before, we could only put about 840 watts of light on each bridge pillar. It wasn't powerful enough to make the color look right.

"Now, we have four lights per pillar, and each light is 650 watts - a total of 2,600 watts of light illuminating each pillar. Each new light is individually more powerful than a cluster of the old lights."

Not that the installation was easy. Credit the gritty persistence of the Engineering Department's Signal Shop.

Haynes and his co-workers donned safety harnesses and climbed from boats onto bridge ladders to reach and replace most of the fixtures. They changed out fuses and pulled out what seemed like miles of old wiring.

It was disorienting, being up in the air in a harness, your feet touching a ladder instead of the ground.

"It took us a little over two weeks," Haynes says. "We tried to do a pillar a day, but it was a lot of work, rewiring and cleaning up around the new fixtures. It was also 95 degrees, so we got hot pretty fast."

The final work highest up was done by a Stansell Electric crew, using a special truck with a bucket that could safely swing an electrician over and below the bridge deck.

Posted by evreeland at 2:54 PM