Shasta County, California Bridges: Lakeshore Drive Bridge across Charlie Creek

September 2007 (40.86932 Degrees, -122.39145 Degrees) Charlie Creek Bridge

Continuing north along the Sacramento River we arrived at the Charlie Creek Bridge (06C0054). This open spandrel arch bridge was built in 1926. It carries Lakeshore Drive over Charlie Creek near it's mouth with the Sacramento River. After the completion of the Shasta Dam, the deck was inundated and so they built a slab bridge on short pier walls on top of the deck to keep the traffic out of the water. It looks like the concrete slab was replaced by a timber stringer superstructure at some point. While driving across the bridge I didn't notice that I wasn't driving on the original arch bridge's deck. They must have raised the approaches slightly to accommodate the higher deck.

I didn't photograph it, but a few hundred yards away is the Union Pacific Sacramento Arm Bridge. It looks similar to yesterday's Salt Creek Bridge with a deep 3-span Warren truss over high concrete piers across the Sacramento River. Please visit The Bridgehunter website, which has several photos of it.

Shasta County, California Bridges: Lakeshore Drive Bridge across Charlie Creek by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.