Calaveras County, California Bridges: New Melones Bridge across the Stanislaus River (1)

Sptember 2005 (38.00667 Degrees, -120.49833 Degrees) New Melones Bridge

The next bridge upstream on the Stanislaus River is the New Melones Bridge. This bridge (32 0040) carries State Route 49 (the Golden Chain Highway) over the Stanislaus River, which has been turned into a reservoir by the New Melones Dam. The Stanislaus River is the boundary between Calaveras and Tuolumne Counties, and so this bridge has a Tuolumne bridge number starting in 32.

The New Melones Bridge is a six span continuous steel box girder bridge that was built in 1976. The superstructure is composed of two continuous steel box girders with enormous haunches over the piers. It's 2250 ft long with a 550 ft long center span. However, TY LIN designed the world's longest steel box girder bridge span (over 1000 ft) across the Yangstze in Chongqing in 2006 (which looks similar to this bridge).

The deck, superstructure, and substructure of the New Melone Bridge are all in good condition with a sufficiency rating of 86.

Calaveras County, California Bridges: New Melones Bridge across the Stanislaus River (1) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.