Amador County, California Bridges: State Route 49 Bridge across Rancheria Creek

March 2013 (38.42500, -120.84500) Rancheria Creek Bridge

Back at the Golden Chain Highway (SR49) just south of Drytown is a three span, prestressed concrete, continuous cast-in-place box girder bridge over Rancheria Creek. The bridge is just north of the State Route 49 Cutoff built in 2007 that we visited last month, which included the very tall Sutter Creek and Amador Creek Bridges.

The Rancheria Creek Bridge (26 0017) was built by Caltrans in 1983. It has a streamlined style, but I think what makes it attractive is its setting in a beautiful green, hilly landscape completely devoid of any sign of human existence.

The bridge is 330 ft long with a 120 ft long main span and 43.6 ft wide deck. It carries about 7600 vehicles a day and has a sufficiency rating of 97.6 out of 100.

Amador County, California Bridges: State Route 49 Bridge across Rancheria Creek by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.