Sonoma County, California Bridges: NWP Haystack Landing Bridge across the Petaluma River (2)

April 2016 (38.2277, -122.6145) Petaluma River Bridge

Adjacent to the State Route 101 Bridge is a bascule bridge replacement for the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) and NWP Railroad.  The original Haystack Landing (Swing) Bridge across the Petaluma River (shown below) was built in 1903 by the Pennsylvania Steel Company and moved to Petaluma. The replacement, a railroad bridge across the Intercostal Waterway on Galveston Island, was sold to SMART as part of $70 million project to expand the railroad 40 miles between Santa Rosa to San Raphael.

The replacement bridge was built in Galveston in 1986 after the previous bridge was destroyed by a hurricane. In 2012 the 105 ft long bascule bridge was replaced with a much longer (300 ft long) lift bridge. The old bascule bridge was sold to SMART for $4 million. It was taken apart and carried by rail to California before being reassembled on Mare Island. The old swing bridge was sold for scrap and moved out of the way in September of 2015.

The replacement is a single leaf bascule with a Scherzer type of rolling lift span that has a quick and simple operation. The bridge can carry live loads without any mechanism and uses rack and pinion gears to raise and lower the span.

Sonoma County, California Bridges: NWP Haystack Landing Bridge across the Petaluma River (2) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.