Yolo County, California Bridges: I-80 Bridges across the Sacramento River

July 2013 (38.59806 Degrees, -121.54778 Degrees) Bryte Bend Bridges

Continuing downstream along the Sacramento River we arrived at the Bryte Bend (I-80) Bridges (22 0026L/R). They are 22 span steel trapezoidal box girder bridges built in 1971. Each bridge is 4050 ft long with a 370 ft long main span. The bridges are supported on reinforced concrete hammerhead single column bents.

The steel box girder walls are only 3/8 of an inch thick and they've been having problems with cracking at the cross-frame locations, beginning when the composite deck was being poured and continuing to the present day. More information on this problem is available in reports by Hardesty & Hanover Consulting Engineers, by Northwest University, and by other engineers and researchers.

Despite these problems, the Bryte Bend Bridge (which has a similar appearance to the recently studied Elkhorn Bridge) won the most beautiful bridge award from the American Institute of Steel Construction in 1972.

Yolo County, California Bridges: I-80 Bridges across the Sacramento River by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.