Napa County, California Bridges: Pope Street Bridge across the Napa River

December 2013 (38.51117 Degrees, -122.45581 Degrees) Pope Street Bridge

Continuing up the Napa River we arrived at the Pope Street Bridge (21C0109), a three span stone arch bridge on pier walls. I would imagine the spans are nicely balanced to prevent the arching force from pushing over the piers. Not only is each span arched but the bridge is on a vertical curve that peaks in the middle of the bridge.

The Pope Street Bridge is 177 ft long but only 18 ft wide. It was built by R. H. Pithie in 1894 for horse-drawn carriages but it's strong enough to handle the 3000 trucks and cars that drive over it every day (with a sufficiency rating of 50). The bridge was put into the National Register in 1972. The stone came from the Wing Quarry which supplied many of the surviving stone structures in this part of Napa County.

The piers have sharp cutwaters on the upstream side to deflect the rocks and tress that come downstream during floods. The bridge is really in remarkable shape for a 120 year old structure built without any reinforcement. I imagine Napa County does an extra good job of maintaining it. The bridge sits next to Napa Valley College and Stonesbridge Park and so it must be a source of pride to the surrounding community.

Napa County, California Bridges: Pope Street Bridge across the Napa River by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.