El Dorado County, California Bridges: Forebay Rd Bridge across the South Fork of the American River

February 2013 (38.7936 Degrees, -120.6269 Degrees) Forebay Road Bridge

I spent a long time trying to find some information about the Forebay Road Bridge across the South Fork of the American River (SFAR). I have a database of all the state and local bridges in California, but this bridge wasn't on it. The bridge crosses at the eastern end of Slab Creek Reservoir, which is what they call the part of the SFAR upstream of the dam, but I couldn't find any information on a bridge across Slab Creek either.

It's a ten mile drive up a dead end road and the only thing at the end of the road are some penstocks, generators, and high voltage transmission lines. I finally decided that this bridge must be owned by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) and built as part of their project to produce electricity in this area near Pollock Pines during the 1960s.

The river crossing is a three span 260 ft long continuous steel girder bridge on tall concrete piers. It's in pretty good shape so I'm going to guess it's about 50 years old, the same age as the dams and other SMUD facilities.

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