Sonoma County, California Bridges: Alexander Valley Road Bridge across the Russian River (1)

September 2014 (38.65889 Degrees, -122.82889 Degrees) Jimtown Bridge

Northwest to southeast faulting created the northwest to southeast mountains in Sonoma County, which resulted in northwest to southeast rivers and northwest to southeast highways (see photo below). Alexander Valley Road crosses the Russian River on a very unusual bridge (see photo above). Most truss bridges have horizontal or convex top chords but the Alexander Valley Road (or Jimtown) Bridge (20C0006) has concave top chords with tower-like elements over the piers. This suggests that the trusses act like suspension bridges with the top chord carrying the spans in tension. We'll take a closer look at this interesting bridge tomorrow.

Sonoma County, California Bridges: Alexander Valley Road Bridge across the Russian River (1) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.