Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Calaveras County, California Bridges; Dogtown Road Bridge across Indian Creek

June 2013 (38.14583 Degrees, -120.56889 Degrees) Dogtown Road Bridge
I tried several times to drive to some old steel girder bridges off of Ponderosa Way, but no matter which direction I started, I always ended up in front of a locked gate. It seems as though much of the land around Ponderosa Way in Calaveras, Amador, and the other counties on the west side of the Sierras have all become private property.
The last bridges I photographed in Calaveras County were all along Dogtown Road, and a little east of the camelback truss bridge we studied yesterday.
The Dogtown Road Bridge across Indian Creek (30C0051) is a two span continuous concrete slab bridge that was built in 1930. Note that one end of the pier wall is flat and the other end is pointed like a cutwater. The pointy end must be upstream side of the bridge.

The bridge has two 13 ft long spans and two 1.5 ft deep abutments for a total length of 29 ft. The bridge is only 19 ft wide from edge of deck to edge of deck and it's on a 34 degree skew.
I've noticed on many old slab bridges they would cast the barrier along with the bridge deck. Then when they wanted to provide a safety rail, they just bolted it onto the concrete barrier.
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Calaveras County, California Bridges; Dogtown Road Bridge across Indian Creek by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

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