El Dorado County, California Bridges: Mira Paradis Drive Bridge across the Middle Fork of the Cosumnes River (1)

January 2013 (38.6264 Degrees, -120.7007 Degrees) Mira Paradis Drive Bridge

Near the Mount Aukum Bridge (seen in the upper right in today's photo) is the older Mira Paradis Drive Bridge. It is an open spandrel arch bridge that was built in 1924. It has rubble-filled retaining walls, which used to be quite popular in California.

It seems like whenever the state or county needs a newer bridge, they just create a slight detour in the road to bypass the older bridge. I think that's a good strategy for preserving a little bit of history. In the Google earth photo above, we can see the older Mira Paradis Drive Bridge in the middle of the photo and the newer bridge on a slight detour to the left. It seems like they always build the new bridge a little longer and a little taller then the old bridge.

We'll take a closer look at the old Mira Paradis Drive Bridge tomorrow.

El Dorado County, California Bridges: Mira Paradis Drive Bridge across the Middle Fork of the Cosumnes River (1) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.