Martin County, Florida Bridges: State Route 15 Bridge across St Lucie Canal

January 2014 (26.98861 Degrees, -80.61806 Degrees) SR15 Bridge

A little west of the Port Mayaca Railroad Bridge is the US441/SR15 Bridge (FDOT#890103) over SR76 and the St. Lucie Canal. It's a 25 span precast girder bridge built in 1983. In the photo above we can see the gate holding back Lake Okeechobee just behind the bridge. Note that the girders are deeper on the long spans over canal.

This bridge is a series of simple spans without a continuous deck for live load. Consequently, when I stood on the deck to photograph the Port Mayaca RR Bridge, I was shaken by every truck that drove by.The bridge is 2460 ft long with 130 ft long spans over the canal.

The bridge is supported on two column bents with a cross-beam between the columns (and with a pier wall at the bottom of the bents close to the canal). The bridge is quite tall and so it must climb very quickly from the ground to get over the canal. We can see old timber piles/fenders downstream of the current bridge, suggesting that an earlier bridge may have been at this site. However, I couldn't find any information about such a bridge.

Martin County, Florida Bridges: State Route 15 Bridge across St Lucie Canal by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.