Calaveras County, California Bridges; OByrnes Ferry Road Bridge across the Stanislaus River (2)

May 2013 (37.9000 Degrees, -120.56694 Degrees) OByrnes Ferry Road Bridge

A couple more photos of the OByrnes Ferry Road Bridge (30C0085). This bridge was built in 1956 to replace a covered bridge (built by the Union Bridge Company of Sonora) that was built in 1862 but removed before the land was flooded to create the reservoir. There was a suspension bridge at this site before the covered bridge, but it was damaged by floods. Before that there was a ferry service across the Stanislaus River connecting the main road between Stockton and Sonora. Oldcorner.com provides some great information on the history (with many photos) of this important river crossing.

The current bridge is considered functionally obsolete because of its narrow width and the county is working with Stantech Consulting and TYLIN International on a replacement. Several different crossings with costs between $30 million and $160 million were proposed at a meeting in April of 2012. More information on the replacement project is available on this website.

The Tulloch Reservoir looks almost full in the bridge photos taken in May. They must control the water level with the dams upstream and downstream of the reservoir. The land around the reservoir is owned by the Tri-Dam Project (Donnells Dam, Beardsley Dam, and Tulloch Dam), along with state and federal land, and some privately owned subdivisions. More information on the Tri-Dam Project is available online.

Calaveras County, California Bridges; OByrnes Ferry Road Bridge across the Stanislaus River (2) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.