Sonoma County, California Bridges: Arnold Drive Bridge across Sonoma Creek

August 2014 (38.3508 Degrees, -122.5189 Degrees) Arnold Drive Bridge

I was about to call this bridge a Camelback truss until I read in the Bridgehunter that Camelback trusses have 5-sided upper chords, while today's bridge has a 7-sided top chord, making it a Parker through truss. The Arnold Drive Bridge (20C0213) sits on the edge of a large developmental center between Eldridge and Glen Ellen. We've traveled northeast from Petaluma and so this bridge crosses over the previously visited Sonoma Creek.

This area was called "Valley of the Moon' by the writer Jack London and is a major wine producing region. The bridge was built in 1930 and remains in 'good' condition but with a poor deck. It's the deck that goes first on bridges. Trucks keep getting heavier and older structures can't sustain all the traffic (14,000 vehicles a day).

The Arnold Drive Bridge is 140 ft long, 24 ft wide, but with a vertical clearance of only 12.7 ft. I'm surprised that the portal frames haven't been damaged by tall vehicles during the last 84 years. The bridge has a plaque that says that it's a Sonoma historic landmark. It also says that the bridge was designed by E. A. Peugh. I went online and found (on the Historic Bridges Website) that he (she?) had designed several other truss bridges in Sonoma County.

Sonoma County, California Bridges: Arnold Drive Bridge across Sonoma Creek by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.