Nostalgia & History > New and Old Pit River Bridge at Lake Shasta

This old Postcard raised some questions in my mind. Is the old bridge ever exposed at low water levels? Could this photo been taken during the "First Fill" of the lake? I suppose the Railroad is at the far right. View sure shows how high the current Pit river bridge is compared to the original R-O-W.
Dave

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Looks more like Lakehead to me.


TCS - no ? (since proven wrong)

Nope. I think it's Pit River Bridge because it's a two level structure (one for autos and one for SP). For five consecutive summers my family and I rented a houseboat on Lake Shasta and one year (I think it was 1985) was a severe drought year and we had spent the night on the Pitt River arm of Lake Shasta. I don't remember seeing the old concrete bridge. The one at Lakehead you can see anytime as a newer road was constructed on top of it.

Still a facinating shot of the early days.

Tony J.

The old SP main followed the Sacramento River not the Pitt River. That would be further to the west towards the dam. However there may have been another RR RofW along the Pitt River according to this:

http://www.shastalake.com/attractions/index.html

"At the bottom of the canyon (Pitt) lies the remains of the Sacramento Valley and Eastern Railroad - a line built at company expense to link the mines at Bully Hill on the Squaw Creek Arm, to the Southern Pacific lines along the Sacramento River."

I've never seen the original bridge. Hope we don't, looks like the Lake would be nearly empty before it reappears.

sphogger

sphogger Wrote:
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> The old SP main followed the Sacramento River not
> the Pitt River.

This makes more sense. The R-O-W seemed to low to be the SP. Still wondering if this shot was taken during original fill...Thanks Hogger

jdb has done some interesting research on this angle and wrote a few posts about it in the TO archives. Notice there's a small tree to the left of the bridge which would suggest it's the first season.

TCnR Wrote:
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> jdb has done some interesting research on this
> angle and wrote a few posts about it in the TO
> archives. Notice there's a small tree to the left
> of the bridge which would suggest it's the first
> season.

The Trees. Easy to forget that just about all the trees would have been gone or just poles with little or no branches if it were flooded before. Duhh! Don't think the lake will ever get low enough to expose the bridge again.

Or like this old post:
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,1497357,1497926#msg-1497926

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Anybody interested should check out John Signor's book "Rail in the Shadow of Mount Shasta". There are under construction photos of the line relocation and bridge construction. The Pitt River bridge is, according to Signor, over 300 feet high, making it one of the highest bridges on the SP system. Unfortunately, most of it was submerged when the Shasta Lake was filled in. It is scary driving over it knowing just how high that bridge really is.

But there was no railroad right-of-way directly underneath the Pitt River bridge. The other bridges constructed during the line relocation were deck truss types, and several of them were in close proximity to the existing railway line, albeit at a higher level. This is probably a photo of one of them.

They don't always remove all the trees before flooding, sometimes they plan to do that in the next season, sometimes they just live with the flotsam that comes up after a few years. It is often recorded in some sort of observation though as it is a problem for many reasons.

dmaffei Wrote:
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> This old Postcard raised some questions in my
> mind. Is the old bridge ever exposed at low water
> levels? Could this photo been taken during the
> "First Fill" of the lake? I suppose the Railroad
> is at the far right. View sure shows how high the
> current Pit river bridge is compared to the
> original R-O-W.
> Dave


the next time any of you are at the Dam..go on the tour.. the tour guide will take you to the lowest area and you will be taken into a by pass tunnel when the water was diverted. If you take a close look it is an old railroad tunnel when the row went up the canyon...

SanJoaquinEngr Wrote:
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> a by pass tunnel
> when the water was diverted. If you take a close
> look it is an old railroad tunnel when the row
> went up the canyon...

Check out this album... page 9 shows a cab-forward and train passing through this tunnel, and page 16 shows it later as the means to divert the river.

http://www.usbr.gov/mp/ncao/shasta/virtual_tour.pdf

Mark

A related thread:

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,1203120

Sounds like "jb"'s next to last paragraph (opening post) addresses the question at the top of this one.

Mark