 |
| January 2014 (38.47409 Degrees, -122.02966 Degrees) Pleasants Valley Road Bridge |
Unfortunately the next bridge that crossed Pleasants Creek was not preserved. The new Pleasants Valley Road Bridge (23C0098) is a single span (90 ft long) concrete box girder bridge (on a 30 degree skew) that was built in 1999.
The previous bridge at this site was a reinforced concrete closed spandrel arch bridge very similar to the Putah Creek Road Bridge that we studied yesterday (but never widened). This bridge was built in 1907, found eligible for registration as a historic place in 1984, but torn down in 1998. Fortunately, the bridge was carefully photographed by the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) and the photos were preserved by the
US Library of Congress.
The old bridge was 70 ft long and less than 18 ft wide. The photos show the old bridge was covered in swallow nests, which I've noticed on many bridges in this region. In fact, I've seen some bridges covered with mesh to keep away the swallows, although the nests don't reduce the bridge's capacity.
A great deal of information is available about this bridge and about this region (written and preserved by the
Library of Congress). They discuss in detail the agricultural development of Pleasants Valley that we found to be continuing today. Much of the area is organically farmed and we saw roadside stands selling olive oil and honey that had been produced in the region.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment