The California Powder Works Bridge is a historic

covered bridge A covered bridge is a timber-truss bridge with a roof, decking, and siding, which in most covered bridges create an almost complete enclosure. The purpose of the covering is to protect the wooden structural members from the weather. Uncovered woo ...

Santa Cruz, California Santa Cruz (Spanish for "Holy Cross") is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, in Northern California. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 62,956. Situated on the northern edge of Monterey Bay, Santa Cruz is a pop ...

. It is a

Smith truss A truss bridge is a bridge whose load-bearing superstructure is composed of a truss, a structure of connected elements, usually forming triangular units. The connected elements (typically straight) may be stressed from tension, compression, or ...

bridge, built across the

San Lorenzo River The San Lorenzo River is a long river whose headwaters originate in Castle Rock State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains and flow south by southeast through the San Lorenzo Valley before passing through Santa Cruz and emptying into Monterey Ba ...

in 1872 by the

California Powder Works California Powder Works was the first American explosive powder manufacturing company west of the Rocky Mountains. When the outbreak of the Civil War cut off supplies of gunpowder to California's mining and road-building industries, a local manufac ...

, an explosives manufacturer whose factory complex stood on the river banks. The bridge was designated a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places listed ...

in 2015 as one of the best-preserved national examples of the Smith truss. It is owned and maintained by the Paradise Park Masonic Club, and is open to pedestrian and vehicular traffic, with a posted weight limit of 5 tons.

Description and history

The California Powder Works Bridge is located about north of downtown Santa Cruz, spanning the San Lorenzo River just downstream of

Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park is a state park of California, United States, preserving mainly forest and riparian areas in the watershed of the San Lorenzo River, including a grove of old-growth coast redwood. It is located in Santa Cruz Coun ...

. The bridge carries Keystone Way, a private road in the residential development known as the Paradise Park Masonic Club. It is a single span, with a total structure length of and a span length of . Its total width is , and it has a roadway width of . Its trusses are built out of

Douglas fir The Douglas fir (''Pseudotsuga menziesii'') is an evergreen conifer species in the pine family, Pinaceae. It is native to western North America and is also known as Douglas-fir, Douglas spruce, Oregon pine, and Columbian pine. There are three va ...

, and its roof is corrugated metal. The exterior is clad in vertical board-and-batten siding. The bridge was constructed by the

Pacific Bridge Company Pacific Bridge Company was a large engineering and construction company. During World War II, Pacific Bridge Company of Alameda, California was selected to build US Navy Auxiliary Repair Docks (ARD) a type of Auxiliary floating drydock and Ty ...

, its major elements manufactured at a plant in

Alameda An alameda is a Avenue (landscape), street or path lined with trees () and may refer to: Places Canada *Alameda, Saskatchewan, town in Saskatchewan **Grant Devine Dam, formerly ''Alameda Dam'', a dam and reservoir in southern Saskatchewan Chile ...

, and was installed in 1872. It was built for the California Powder Works, whose main manufacturing plant was on the east side of the river. The company operated on that site between 1863 and 1914, after which the site was largely demolished and abandoned. The property was purchased by a

Masonic Freemasonry or Masonry refers to Fraternity, fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local guilds of Stonemasonry, stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their inte ...

organization from

Fresno Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, maki ...

, and developed as a summer colony they dubbed "Paradise Park". The bridge is one of 23 known historic (pre-1955) examples of a Smith truss remaining in the United States, and is the longest and among the best-preserved of those, as determined by a nationwide survey conducted by the

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational propertie ...

. This truss type was marketed on a nationwide scale by the Smith Bridge Company, and was briefly competitive with iron bridges, which were coming to predominate in the landscape.

References

External links

* {{Santa Cruz, California Road bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in California Transportation buildings and structures in Santa Cruz County, California Santa Cruz, California Historic American Engineering Record in California National Historic Landmarks in California National Register of Historic Places in Santa Cruz County, California Covered bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in California Wooden bridges in California

Description and history

See also

References

External links