El Dorado County, California Bridges: Mount Murphy Road Bridge across the South Fork of the American River (4)

January 2013 (38.8015 Degrees, -120.8906 Degrees) Mount Murphy Road Bridge

The Mount Murphy Road Bridge carries vehicles from State Route 49 through Coloma and across the South Fork of the American River. Note that Mount Murphy sits almost directly east of the bridge. A wooden guard rail does double duty protecting the steel truss and preventing pedestrians and vehicles from falling into the river (a concrete curb also helps). The 13.5 foot vertical clearance hopefully isn't too much of a hindrance to the local vehicles that use the bridge.

This bridge could easily be turned into a a protected historical structure and pedestrian bridge and a new road bridge could be built for vehicles. El Dorado County takes good care of it's bridges and so I'm sure that will probably happen in a few years (maybe for the bridge's 100th birthday).

El Dorado County, California Bridges: Mount Murphy Road Bridge across the South Fork of the American River (4) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.