Utah's Bridges: State Route 276 over North Wash in Garfield County

May 2006 (38.02472, -110.57667) SR-276 over North Wash Bridge

I rode south past Hanksville and onto State Route 95 towards Hite. At the junction of SR-95 and SR-276 there is a little bridge over the North Wash, which is a canyon that descends rapidly towards Lake Powell. State Route 296 continues southwest to the town of Bullfrog.

The National Bridge Inventory reports that the North Wash Bridge is composed of two simple (62 ft long) prestressed, precast I girder spans on a hammerhead pier and seat-type abutments. It was designed for an HS20 loading which seems appropriate for a two-lane road carrying only 500 vehicles (and 35 trucks) a day.

The rounded sides of the pier may have been chosen to provide minimum drag during the flash floods that occasionally pour through this wash. The bridge is stained from the muddy water and the bank protection at the abutments has been eroded.  The bridge was built in 1967 and the bridge inspection reports discuss erosion and scour. 

Utah's Bridges: State Route 276 over North Wash in Garfield County by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.