Jersey Bridge - Downieville, CA - Truss Bridges on Waymarking.com

The following information from California State Parks Office of Historic Preservation files:

The Jersey Bridge was built in 1938 across the Downie River as a replacement for an earlier bridge which was destroyed by the 1937 Downieville Flood. The bridge is a one lane, steel, rigid-connected polygonal Parker through truss span measuring 120 feet long, running north-south over the Downie River. The roadway is 12.5 feet wide, with a four-foot pedestrian walkway on its eastern side. Stringers, chords, verticals and diagonals are riveted steel I-beams. There are no top struts or top lateral bracing. Bottom lateral bracing is of steel L-girders. A builder plate reading “Judson Pacific Co., San Francisco, 1938” is located on the right end post on each end of the bridge. The pedestrian walkway consists of wooden boards supported by steel I-beams with steel posts and a steel balustrade, topped by a wooden guardrail with secondary wooden handrails on either side of the walkway. The roadway deck is concrete, and the main roadway is flanked with metal guardrails supported on wooden brackets. The north end of the pier sits on a concrete abutment. The south end of the bridge is supported by a pier of board-formed concrete with two concrete cylinders wrapped in riveted steel, one at either end of the pier and serving as support for the bearing seats of the bridge. A concrete abutment is located behind the pier.

In 1937, Downieville had a total of five bridges. The easternmost (and farthest upstream on the Downie River) was the Hospital Bridge, originally called the Downieville Steel Bridge (due to its status as the town’s first steel truss bridge) constructed in 1908. Next was the Hansen Bridge, a Pratt pony truss bridge completed in 1936. Third was a concrete arch bridge constructed by the State of California to carry traffic on Highway 49. Just downstream of the highway bridge was the Jersey Bridge, a wooden bridge constructed in 1875, and the Durgan Bridge, just downstream of where the Downie River met the Yuba, constructed in 1881. Except for the highway bridge, all were constructed as single-lane bridges by the county government.

On December 10, 1937, major storms sent a torrent of water through Downieville destroying the State Highway bridge, the Jersey Bridge, and the Durgan Bridge. The Sierra County officials replaced the Jersey and Durgan bridges in 1938. The California Division of Highways rerouted Highway 49 temporarily over the Jersey Bridge as a temporary expedient until a new highway bridge could be constructed to replace the fallen 1936 bridge. As of 2016, no replacement bridge has been constructed, and the temporary expedient of the Jersey Bridge still carries Highway 49 through the city.