Pit River Bridge | |
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Coordinates | 40°45′44″N122°19′08″W / 40.762337°N 122.318886°W Coordinates: 40°45′44″N122°19′08″W / 40.762337°N 122.318886°W |
Carries | ![]() |
Crosses | Shasta Lake |
Locale | Shasta County, California |
Official name | Veterans of Foreign Wars Memorial Bridge |
Characteristics | |
Design | Warren deck truss |
Total length | 3,588 feet (1,094 m) |
Height | 500 feet (150 m) |
Longest span | 630 feet (190 m) |
No. of spans | 8 |
Piers in water | 7 |
History | |
Opened | 1942 |
Location | |
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The Pit River Bridge (officially the Veterans of Foreign Wars Memorial Bridge [1] ) is a double deck, deck truss, road and rail bridge over Shasta Lake in Shasta County, California. The bridge, carrying Interstate 5 on its upper deck and Union Pacific Railroad on its lower deck, was built in 1942 as part of the construction of the Shasta Dam/Shasta Lake reservoir system. [2] The Pit River Bridge was constructed to replace the Lower Pit River Bridge, as the rising waters of the Shasta Lake reservoir would have put the older bridge underwater. [3] [4] The entire bridge spans 3,588 feet (1,094 m) long on the upper deck and 2,754 feet (839 m) on the lower deck. [2] With a height of 500 feet (150 m) above the old Pit River bed, it is structurally the highest double decked bridge in the United States; however, today the bridge sits only about 40 feet (12 m) above the water when Shasta Lake is full. [3] The bridge is Interstate 5's halfway point.
At the time it was built, the highway on the bridge was signed as U.S. Route 99 and the rail line was owned by Southern Pacific. The Coast Starlight , the passenger train line operated by Amtrak that runs between Los Angeles and Seattle, also uses the bridge. [2]
The bridge is officially known as the Veterans of Foreign Wars Memorial Bridge, to honor military veterans from California who have fought in foreign wars. [1]
The Pit River Bridge was the subject of the 1954 Pulitzer Prize for Photography winner entitled "Rescue on Pit River Bridge", taken by Virginia Schau. [5]
The Sacramento River is the principal river of Northern California in the United States and is the largest river in California. Rising in the Klamath Mountains, the river flows south for 400 miles (640 km) before reaching the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and San Francisco Bay. The river drains about 26,500 square miles (69,000 km2) in 19 California counties, mostly within the fertile agricultural region bounded by the Coast Ranges and Sierra Nevada known as the Sacramento Valley, but also extending as far as the volcanic plateaus of Northeastern California. Historically, its watershed has reached as far north as south-central Oregon where the now, primarily, endorheic (closed) Goose Lake rarely experiences southerly outflow into the Pit River, the most northerly tributary of the Sacramento.
The Steel Bridge is a through truss, double-deck vertical-lift bridge across the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, United States, opened in 1912. Its lower deck carries railroad and bicycle/pedestrian traffic, while the upper deck carries road traffic, and light rail (MAX), making the bridge one of the most multimodal in the world. It is the only double-deck bridge with independent lifts in the world and the second oldest vertical-lift bridge in North America, after the nearby Hawthorne Bridge. The bridge links the Rose Quarter and Lloyd District in the east to Old Town Chinatown neighborhood in the west.
Shasta Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam across the Sacramento River in Northern California in the United States. At 602 feet (183 m) high, it is the eighth-tallest dam in the United States. Located at the north end of the Sacramento Valley, Shasta Dam creates Shasta Lake for long-term water storage, flood control, hydroelectricity and protection against the intrusion of saline water. The largest reservoir in the state, Shasta Lake can hold about 4,500,000 acre-feet (5,600 GL).
The Pit River is a major river draining from northeastern California into the state's Central Valley. The Pit, the Klamath and the Columbia are the only three rivers in the U.S. that cross the Cascade Range.
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Shasta Lake, also popularly known as Lake Shasta, is a reservoir in Shasta County, California, United States. It began to store water in 1944 due to the impounding of the Sacramento River by Shasta Dam, the ninth tallest dam in the United States.
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Lake Britton is a reservoir located in Shasta County, California. It is known for its wide variety of bass and trout. Its main body is situated to the west of State Route 89, and is mostly surrounded by PG&E Land, Forest Service Land, and McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park. Along the north shore lies North Shore and Dusty Campgrounds. It is fed by the Pit River and has tributaries of Clark Creek, Burney Creek, and Hat Creek and is impounded by the Pit #3 Dam.
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The North Fork Feather River is a watercourse of the northern Sierra Nevada in the U.S. state of California. It flows generally southwards from its headwaters near Lassen Peak to Lake Oroville, a reservoir formed by Oroville Dam in the foothills of the Sierra, where it runs into the Feather River. The river drains about 2,100 square miles (5,400 km2) of the western slope of the Sierras. By discharge, it is the largest tributary of the Feather.
The environment of California describes results of human habitation of the American State of California.
Spring Creek Debris Dam is an earthfill dam on Spring Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento River, in Shasta County in the U.S. state of California. Completed in 1963, the dam, maintained by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, serves primarily to collect severe acid mine drainage stemming from the Iron Mountain Mine. The dam forms the Spring Creek Reservoir, less than 1 mile (1.6 km) long. Spring Creek and South Fork Spring Creek flow into the reservoir from a 16-square-mile (41 km2) watershed. The dam is directly upstream from the city of Keswick, California and the Keswick Reservoir. The operation is part of the Trinity River Division of the Central Valley Project.
Lake Hodges is a lake and reservoir located within the city limits of San Diego, California. It is about 31 miles (50 km) north of Downtown San Diego, just north of the Rancho Bernardo community, and just south of the city's border with Escondido. When full, the reservoir has 1,234 acres (4.99 km2), a maximum water depth of 115 feet (35 m), and 27 miles (43 km) of shoreline. Lake Hodges has a total capacity of 30,251 acre-feet of water. Lake Hodges is owned by the city of San Diego, supplies water to the San Dieguito Water District and Santa Fe Irrigation District, and its mailing city address is Escondido.
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Keswick Dam is a concrete gravity dam on the Sacramento River about 2 miles (3.2 km) northwest of Redding, California. Part of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Central Valley Project, the dam is 157 feet (48 m) high and impounds the Keswick Reservoir, which has a capacity of 23,800 acre⋅ft (29,400,000 m3). The dam's power plant has three turbines with a generating capacity of 117 megawatts (MW), which, in 1992, was uprated from its original 75 MW. The dam and reservoir serve as an afterbay to regulate peaking power releases from the Shasta Dam upstream.
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