Nevada County, California Bridges: Purdon Bridge across the South Yuba River (2)

December 2012 (39.3278 Degrees, -121.0465 Degrees) Purdon Bridge

The 145 ft long main span of the Purdon Bridge (17C0024) is supported on four concrete filled pipe piles. The approach spans are on steel stringers while the main span is on timber stringers. This 117 year old bridge is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places but it's structurally deficient (scoring only 16.2 out of 100) and the current recommendation is for bridge replacement. The truss members are covered in rust but fortunately, the bridge only carries 47 vehicles a day. It currently has a load rating of 4.4 tons, which seems high. I imagine that it's up to Nevada County to rehabilitate and preserve this historic bridge.

Nevada County, California Bridges: Purdon Bridge across the South Yuba River (2) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.