Enter a name, company, place or keywords to search across this item. Then click "Search" (or hit Enter).
Volume 050-1 - January 1996 (8 pages)
Go to the Archive Home
Go to Thumbnail View of this Item
Go to Single Page View of this Item
Download the Page Image
Copy the Page Text to the Clipboard
Don't highlight the search terms on the Image
Show the Page Image
Show the Image Page Text
Reset View and Center Image
Zoom Out
Zoom In
Rotate Left
Rotate Right
Toggle Full Page View
Flip Image Horizontally
More Information About this Image
Get a Citation for Page or Image - Copy to the Clipboard
Go to the Previous Page (or Left Arrow key)
Go to the Next Page (or Right Arrow key)
Page: of 8
~s
Interior views of the Bridgeport covered bridge show the elaborate network of timbers. (Photos by David Comstock.)
support members, but substitution of metal trusses eliminated
the need to cover its bridges, because iron does not deteriorate as quickly as wood. The use of iron trusses eventually
brought about the demise of covered bridges in the United
States.)
On the Bridgeport structure, a network of large hand-hewn
timbers is tied together with enormous iron bolts to provide
support and tension for main trusses that are 230 feet long.
The trusses are supplemented by a double arch on each side
that is bolted to the trusses—the arches are visible on the
inside and outside of the bridge. The abutments are constructed of fitted granite blocks, and the distance from one
abutment to the other is 210 feet, 458 inches. The gabled roof
is wood-framed and covered with 27,000 hand-split sugar
pine shakes that are 36 inches long and 5 to 6 inches wide.
The California Gold Rush
The rush for gold in the Far West began in 1848 and had
continued throughout the 1850s and 1860s, particularly in
Nevada and Sierra counties, where a variety of techniques for
gold extraction had been used with considerable success. By
1860, individual placer miners still worked many of the
streams and rivers, but the most valuable resources had fallen
into the hands of capitalists who were able to employ large
numbers of laborers at relatively low wages. Some companies were engaged in washing away mountainsides with
powerful streams of water forced through pipes and nozzles
under extremely high pressure; other workers were employed
underground, where they drilled, blasted, and shoveled goldbearing quartz rock into ore carts so it could be hauled to
quartz mills for processing.
In the earliest days, the roads from Marysville and Sacramento to mining camps in Nevada, Yuba, and Sierra counties
had been little better than trails, and they were used mostly
by pedestrians, equestrians, and mule trains. It wasn’t long,
however, before the roads had to be rebuilt and improved to
accommodate the use of stage coaches and heavy wagons.
After the discovery of rich ores over in the Great Basin, these
roads were put to use as feeder lines for the Henness Pass
highway. Two roads ran from Sacramento to Marysville, and
these were known as the “upper and lower Marysville roads.”
The upper one passed through the towns of Lincoln, Sher-™,
idan, and Wheatland. The lower road went by way of Nic-~
olaus and followed the Sacramento and Feather rivers.