Sacramento Bridges

The original route in and out of Sacramento to the west was by way of the “I” street bridge, constructed in 1911.  The bridge doubled for railroad and vehicle traffic with the railroad using the bottom level and autos above.  The “I” street bridge is a swing bridge with the center portion resting on a single pier in the middle of the river.  When ships needed to pass, the bridge would rotate until it was aligned parallel with the river creating a passage on either side.  I’ve never seen another one like it.

The “I” street bridge was originally part of State Route 16 and passed through West Sacramento and then joined a causeway and what would become Interstate 80, three miles out of town.  The causeway was, itself, a 3 mile long roadway that traversed the lowlands on the west side of the Sacramento River.  It was built partly on raised dirt fill and partly on wooden piles driven into the mud below.  There were two such pathways that paralleled each other, one for vehicle traffic and one for the railroad.  The area around the causeway was usually under water, and was farmed extensively for rice production.

Partly to facilitate future war efforts and partly to relieve depression era unemployment, it was decided to construct a better bridge across the Sacramento River; Enter the Tower Bridge.  Completed in 1935, the Tower Bridge is amazingly reminiscent of it’s cousin in London, England and is also a vertical lift bridge.

The Tower Bridge in Sacramento probably derives its name from it’s European cousin and it dawned on me while I was looking up all this information that all the “Tower” references (Tower Theater, Tower Records) in and around Sacramento are probably related to this same source!  Imagine that, Tower Records and Tower Books being named after a London landmark.

Sacramento has two very unusual bridges less than half a mile apart and one of them, the Tower Bridge, has become a national landmark.  When I was growing up there, the area along the river between the bridges was a very run down part of town but it has had a facelift and is now called “Old Town.”  It has become a tourist attraction and is the home of  that old paddlewheel steamboat, the “Delta King,” permanently tied up along the rivers edge.