American River Bridges: I-5 Expressway Bridges

It's a mile and a half downstream from 12th Street to the next two bridges across the American River. The I-5 Expressway Bridges are a pair of 28-span, continuous concrete box girder superstructures supported on pier walls. Each bridge carries five vehicle lanes. They were built in 1968, which seems to be when most of the highway construction was going on in Sacramento.

Note the architectural treatment at the ends of the piers, the vertical exterior girder, and the rather monolithic appearance of these bridges. That must be the modern, streamlined appearance of late 1960s bridge design in California.

Besides the occasional kayak, you don't see a lot of boats on the American River. Just downstream (near the confluence with the Sacramento River) the speed limit restriction is lifted, the water is much deeper, and the river is filled with jet-skis, motorboats, and big yachts.

American River Bridges: I-5 Expressway Bridges by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

American River Bridges: 12th Street Bridge (2)

Another view of the 12th Street Bridge. There was a guy under the bridge working on a bike (on the closest pier foundation). Light rail trains roll by every 20 minutes along the east side of the bridge. The nearby Sacramento Northern Railroad Bridge used to carry electric trains many years ago, but now it carries cyclists.

It's hard to take a bad photo of this bridge. Standing on the north embankment provides a nice view of the four-banded barrier rail and the pedestals supporting electric power for the train.

Like the nearby 16th Street Bridge, this structure is a city street on the south side and becomes an expressway (State Route 160) on the north side of the bridge. It touches ground briefly north of the American River before becoming a 14 span viaduct over streets, Union Pacific tracks, bike trails, parkland, etc.

American River Bridges: 12th Street Bridge (2) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

American River Bridges: 12th Street Bridge

I like this bridge so much, that I'm going to provide another view of it (at deck-level) tomorrow. When I showed it to the head of Caltrans' Office of Aesthetics, he expressed surprise that it was in Sacramento. It has a timeless quality, like some architectural detail that has been repeated with subtle changes throughout time.

I like how the piers look like they are splitting by a mitosis-like process (the bridge was widened from two to four lanes in 1934) and I like the rounded cutwaters that become concave on top to support power poles.

The 12th Street Bridge is a five-span, closed spandrel reinforced concrete deck arch bridge.  It was built in 1915 but it has a modern look, as if some far-sighted architect or engineer had seen something by Frank Lloyd Wright and intuited the works of Corbusier. All of the shapes have moved beyond the purely geometric to something organic or anthropomorphic.

American River Bridges: 12th Street Bridge by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.