Rating:
2 votes

Garrapata Creek Bridge

Monterey County, California

Photos 

PCH Garrapata Creek Bridge

Photo taken by C Hanchey in August 2008

Enlarge

BH Photo #134973

Map 

Street View 

Description 

The Garrapata Creek Bridge (44 0018) is a reinforced-concrete, open-spandrel, fixed, parabolic-arch bridge with a single, two-ribbed arch span measuring 151 feet long. The bridge features a decorative cantilevered walkway and reinforced-concrete railings in an arched-window design. Most importantly, Garrapata Creek Bridge is one of seven similar bridges along State Route 1 known as the Big Sur Arches. The Big Sur Arches are famous for their thick and heavily inflected piers and thin arch rings and spandrel columns. The Big Sur Arches have been hailed as "the most beautiful public works projects in the United States."

Facts 

Overview
Concrete arch bridge over Garrapata Creek on CA 1
Location
Monterey County, California
Status
Open to traffic
History
Built 1931
Design
Open-spandrel concrete arch
Dimensions
Length of largest span: 149.9 ft.
Total length: 285.4 ft.
Deck width: 24.0 ft.
Recognition
Eligible for the National Register of Historic Places
Approximate latitude, longitude
+36.41738, -121.91381   (decimal degrees)
36°25'03" N, 121°54'50" W   (degrees°minutes'seconds")
Approximate UTM coordinates
10/597378/4030791 (zone/easting/northing)
Quadrangle map:
Soberanes Point
Average daily traffic (as of 2009)
4,300
Inventory numbers
CA 44-18 (California bridge number)
BH 11171 (Bridgehunter.com ID)
Inspection report (as of July 2017)
Overall condition: Fair
Superstructure condition rating: Good (7 out of 9)
Substructure condition rating: Fair (5 out of 9)
Deck condition rating: Good (7 out of 9)
Sufficiency rating: 48.3 (out of 100)
View more at BridgeReports.com

Categories 

Arch (12,687)
Built 1931 (977)
Built during 1930s (12,200)
CA 1 (26)
California (2,722)
Deck arch (11,922)
Functionally obsolete (5,792)
Have street view (29,309)
 Monterey County, California (46)
NR-eligible (4,115)
Open (41,013)
Open-spandrel arch (809)
Owned by state (16,595)
Span length 125-175 feet (4,464)
Total length 250-500 feet (5,559)

Update Log 

  • December 1, 2014: New photo from Dallam Oliver-Lee
  • September 7, 2014: New photos from Royce and Bobette Haley
  • January 22, 2011: Updated by Craig Philpott: corrected location
  • January 16, 2011: New photos from Craig Philpott
  • December 16, 2010: New Street View added by Craig Philpott
  • March 6, 2009: New photos from C Hanchey

Sources 

  • C Hanchey - cmh2315fl [at] yahoo [dot] com
  • Craig Philpott - craigphilpott63 [at] gmail [dot] com
  • Royce and Bobette Haley - roycehaley111 [at] yahoo [dot] com
  • Dallam Oliver-Lee
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Comments 

Garrapata Creek Bridge
Posted October 29, 2021, by Nathan Holth (webmaster [at] historicbridges [dot] org)

This bridge is slated to have its railings replaced from Fall of 2023 through Fall of 2024. They also want to eventually replaced railings on other arch bridges on this road but for now its just this one.:

https://kion546.com/news/2021/10/28/historic-concrete-bridge...