BIG SUR, Calif. — "Big Sur Island" is about to be over. The newly-constructed Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge will reopen to the public in 10 days, CalTrans told KSBW Tuesday.

Powerful winter storms caused the old Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge to buckle from a landslide and fail in February 2017.

Crews demolished it, and the community of Big Sur has existed on an "island" of rugged coastal wilderness ever since.

Highway 1 is blocked to the south by the massive Mud Creek Slide, and cut off by Pfeiffer Canyon to the north. A hiking trail was carved out through the canyon so that Big Sur could be reached on foot.

Construction was expedited for the new Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge, with crews working around-the-clock.

Usually, a project like this would take seven years. But the crews' blistering pace accomplished rebuilding the bridge in just eight months.

Speed aside, it's a major feat of engineering. The bridge is 310 feet long and the steel weighs an estimated 900 tons. Pulling a bridge across a canyon was a first for the state of California.

Meanwhile, the largest landslide ever recorded along California's Central Coast is still blocking Highway 1 south of Big Sur. Work on the $40 project continues daily, and it's not expected to be completed until late summer of 2018, CalTrans said.Building the bridge cost $24 million. A ribbon cutting ceremony will be held on Friday, October 13, for the bridge's official reopening.

The new roadway will be realigned across the landslide and will be buttressed with a series of embankments, berms, rocks, netting, culverts and other stabilizing material.Engineers chose to re-build Highway 1 over the landslide instead of other alternatives, such a burrowing a tunnel, or moving the landslide into the ocean.

"This plan is a win-win for the hard-hit Big Sur community and this pristine coastal environment," Caltrans District 5 Director Tim Gubbins said.