Oregon's Bridges: Ten Mile Creek Bridge

I had trouble identifying this bridge photo because there are several similar bridges only a few miles apart. However, I believe this photo is of Ten Mile Creek Bridge because it is the only bow string arch in a low-lying area of Oregon's Coast. It is another bridge designed by state bridge engineer Conde McCullough.

McCullough began his career as a bridge engineer in Iowa working for the Marsh Engineering Company that had a patent on this type of bridge that they built all over Iowa and Kansas. Conde introduced it to the Pacific Northwest. It was a good choice for a region with loose, sandy soil that couldn't support a deck arch and with corrosive salt air that made steel bridges impractical.

The Ten Mile Creek Bridge is a 180 ft long bridge with a 120 ft long reinforced concrete tied arch. You can see the hangers supporting the concrete floor beams that hold up the deck. It was built in 1931 on US 101 for the State of Oregon. It has ornate, precast concrete barrier rails and four X-shaped cross beams that connect the two arch ribs.

Oregon's Bridges: Ten Mile Creek Bridge by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.