Placer County, California Bridges: Ponderosa Way Bridge across the North Fork of the American River (2)

November 2012 (39.0001 Degrees, -120.940 Degrees) Ponderosa Way Bridge

A closer look at the Ponderosa Way Bridge. I was going to call it a Pratt Truss because the diagonal members slope downward toward the center of the bridge but the Bridgehunter called it a Parker pony truss, probably because of the slightly rounded top chord. It also includes lateral truss members that support the deck transversely.

This bridge was built in 1935 and includes three spans with the truss span in the middle for a total length of 222.1 ft and main span length of 129.9 ft. It has a timber deck, which is unusual for a road bridge, but it only gets 50 vehicles a day. It has two tall RC pier walls that are higher in the center to support the steel stringer spans and lower at the ends to support the truss span.

Placer County, California Bridges: Ponderosa Way Bridge across the North Fork of the American River (2) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.