Saturday, November 9, 2013

Nevada County, California Bridges: Independence Trail Bridges

November 2013 (39.29299 Degrees, -121.09459 Degrees) Independence Trail Bridges
We recently went for a hike along the Excelsior Canal, which was built in 1859 to carry water from the South Yuba River to hydraulic gold mining operations 25 miles away in Smartsville. The canal was a trench along steep hillsides with wooden flumes spanning across the ravines.
Considerable work was required to repair the flumes and turn the trench into a wheelchair accessible trail. The flumes have been turned into footbridges supported on tall timber piers with 'X' bracing.
The 'Independence Trail' is a part of the South Yuba River Project, which will eventually extend from Malakoff Diggins State Park to the confluence of the South Fork and Yuba Rivers. Today's visit was of the East Trail. I'm hoping to explore the West Trail (which has more elaborate flumes/bridges) soon.
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Nevada County, California Bridges: Independence Trail Bridges by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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