Sonoma County, California Bridges: State Route 37 Bridge across Sonoma Creek

August 2014 (38.1559 Degrees, -122.4082 Degrees) Sonoma Creek Bridge

Today we leave San Francisco County for the bridges of Sonoma County (on the north side of San Pablo Bay). Sonoma County was settled by Native American tribes about 10,000 years ago. Spaniards and Russians were drawn to Sonoma in the 16th and 17th centuries.  Signs announcing 'El Camino Real' show where people once traveled between the Spanish missions. Forts, churches, and other buildings with onion-shaped roofs were built by Russian fur traders along the coast in the 1800s. Today the biggest industry in Sonoma is wine making.

Several large rivers flow through Sonoma County before emptying into the Bay. On the southeast side of the county Sonoma Creek is crossed by the State Route 37 Bridge (23 0063). It's a 22 span precast girder bridge supported on precast pile extensions. The bridge was built in 1969 and retrofit in 2002. The pile extensions were okay for vertical loads but were weak laterally, particularly at the lap splice. Cast-in-Steel-Shell (CISS) pile shafts were placed by the exterior girders and big new bent caps were poured to connect everything together. 

Sonoma County, California Bridges: State Route 37 Bridge across Sonoma Creek by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.