While looking for this bridge along the Ohio River, I found these two arch bridges. The California Avenue Bridge is in the foreground, and the Ohio River Blvd. Bridge is in the background.
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| Street View, May 2023 |
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| 3D Satellite |
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| HistoricBridges_California It was opened in 1928 and rehabbed in 1981. The main span is 375' (114m). "It is a rare example of a steel deck arch bridge that features a single-hinge design. The hinge can be seen as a giant pin at the center of the arch." [Note the bottom of the arch of the Ohio River Blvd. Bridge in the upper corners.] |
A history of the namesake for the California Ave. Bridge, Robert McAfee, is provided in pghbridges_California.
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| HistoricBridges_Ohio It was opened in 1930 and rehabbed in 1994. The main span is 270' (82m). |
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| HistoricBridges_Ohio "Notice the size of the city bus passing under the bridge in the photo above." |
I noticed south of the Ohio River Blvd. Bridge there was a normal looking Pennsy overpass. But over that overpass is a trestle.
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| Street View, May 2023 |
That trestle raises the track to allow two more tracks to exist between the river bluff and the factory to connect with Pennsy's Ohio Connecting Bridge.
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| Satellite |
Here we can see how that connector is built about halfway up the side of the bluff. That height matches the height of the Pennsy tracks on the other side of the Ohio River where the main route is on the river bluff rather than down in the valley like they are on this side.
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| Street View, Jun 2022 |
The trestle starts north of Tracy Street to maintain a low grade for this connection. Note that we can also see the deck of the Ohio River Blvd. Bridge in the right background above this trestle.
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| Street View, Jul 2017 |
The Ohio River Blvd. Bridge was one of five concrete arch bridges built as part of the project to build the Ohio River Blvd. that opened in 1931. Since railroads, not roads, were built in the 1800s, the railroad got the nice level right-of-way in the valley. And there were places, like the Spruce Run area, where there was barley room for the railroad between the river and the bluff. So Brighton Road was the main road through Woods Run until California Ave. was finished in 1928. But the "good roads" movement in the 1920s also caused the Ohio River Blvd. to build on the river bluff much further downstream even though that required quite a few bridges to cross the tributaries into the Ohio River. This topo map shows the dense set of contour lines between the Ohio River Blvd. and the railroad. It also shows the flyover connection to the Ohio Connecting Bridge.
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| 1951 Pittsburgh West @ 24,000 |
The area under the bridges was used for filming scenes in the pilot episode of the TV series "Justified."
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