American River Bridges: Watt Avenue Bridge

When I do kayak through the rapids downstream of the Harold M Richey Memorial Bridge, it takes over an hour to get to the next bridge which is about four miles further down the American River.

The Watt Avenue Bridge is a thirteen span, continuous, reinforced concrete T-beam structure supported on pier walls. It was built in 1961 and widened to eight lanes in 2002. The widening included better accommodations for bicyclists and large balconies for people to congregate and look down at the river. It even has a water motif that was embossed and painted on the bridge.

It seems to me that the current is quite strong, and I have to slow down the kayak and aim for the bank or get swept downstream. You may also notice that there are no boats on the river. There is a speed limit of only a few knots and the river gets shallow and so most of the boats are further downstream.

American River Bridges: Watt Avenue Bridge by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.