August 2015 (39.79418, -121.45297) Pulga Bridges |
The photo above was taken in 1937 just after the new highway was completed (courtesy of the UC Davis 'Eastman's Originals Collection') . It looks very similar to the photo I took 78 years later. The bridges were named after the nearby town of Pulga (Spanish for flea) which was also called Big Bar.
The railway crossing is a 435 ft long three span through truss bridge on concrete piers. The bridge was built at this location so the grade could be maintained at 1.0 percent all the way to Beckwourth Pass near Nevada. The railway line was completed in 1909 and it's only half as steep as Southern Pacific's Donner Pass Line to the south.
My friend Steve designed the retrofit/repairs. He said there weren't any shop drawings so he had to measure everything on the bridge (especially all the gusset plates). They built a timber walkway on one side of the bridge so they could work on the retrofit/repairs. Rope climbing teams used to do the biannual bridge inspection but now they use a snooper truck instead (see photo above).

Butte County, California Bridges: Pulga Bridges over the North Fork of the Feather River by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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