Placer County, California Bridges: Foresthill Bridge across the North Fork of the American River (6)

November 2012 (38.922 Degrees, -121.039 Degrees) Foresthill Bridge

Here's the view of the deck of the Foresthill Bridge. The contractor (Golden State Bridge) is using the eastbound lanes for their equipment and allowing two way traffic on the westbound lanes (at a reduced speed). I believe the bridge has a new, wider deck. In the Google earth photo taken in June (shown below) there is a big gap between the two decks.

In the Google earth photo taken a couple of weeks ago, the gap is filled in on the north side while it's still being used to allow workers and equipment under the deck on the south side. Also, in these two photos we can see that the bridge actually crosses the North Fork of the American River, which is running much higher in June than in the end of October.

Placer County, California Bridges: Foresthill Bridge across the North Fork of the American River (6) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

Placer County, California Bridges: Foresthill Bridge across the North Fork of the American River (5)

November 2012 (38.922 Degrees, -121.039 Degrees) Foresthill Bridge

After Yankee Jim's Bridge, the North Fork of the American River continues downstream for about five miles before reaching the Ponderosa Way Bridge, a pony truss structure that I still need to photograph (I also missed the Eucre Bar Bridge north of the Iowa Hill Bridges). Then the river continues for a couple of miles before it is contained behind Clementine Dam. The diminished river continues past the dam until it flows under the very tall Foresthill Bridge and joins the Middle Fork of the American River.

We haven't visited the Foresthill Bridge in a few years (since my blog of October 2009) so I drove up today to take some new pictures. As you can see, parts of the bridge are now covered in a tarp as they remove the lead-based paint and do other work to the bridge including a seismic retrofit. The estimate on all this work was $70 million and the winning bid came in at about $55 million. We'll take a closer look at the bridge and the repairs during the next few days.

Placer County, California Bridges: Foresthill Bridge across the North Fork of the American River (5) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

Peru's Bridges: Puente Bolivar (4)

One last photo of Puente Bolivar. There's something strange about such a long viaduct that carries only a single lane of traffic. It's as if each car was a tiny train on its long trip above the valley floor.

Perhaps the City of Arequipa just needed an excuse to keep the bridge in service. There are alternative routes half a mile to the north and south. Also, there are wide sidewalks on both sides of the deck, so the bridge's main purpose may be as a pedestrian overcrossing.

I was looking through the blogs and websites for information about Puente Bolivar and I found a comment from a Peruvian that Gustave Eiffel hadn't really designed this bridge. According to the writer, an architect had done some research and it was just a myth!

Based on its appearance, I find it hard to say whether Puente Bolivar is the work of Gustave Eiffel. Ponte Maria Pia and the Garabit Viaduct are magnificent structures that look like the Eiffel Tower turned into bridges (see David Billington's The Tower and The Bridge). They don't seem to have anything in common with this rather plain structure. Ponte Internationale and the Rouzat Viaduct have interesting superstructures rather than the rather plain triangular truss elements on Puente Bolivar. Still, there is something evocative of Eiffel in this structure. I just don't think it's one of his major works.

Peru's Bridges: Puente Bolivar (4) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.