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Nueces River Bridge

La Salle County, Texas

Photos 

Photo taken by National Weather Service

BH Photo #419250

Map 

Street View 

Description 

Details from the Road Infrastructure MPS: The advantage of the cantilevered suspended configuration was that it enabled a bridge to carry a significantly longer main span and thinner deck, thus reducing the number of supports and overall cost of the bridge. The Nueces River Bridge carrying BI 35 traffic in Cotulla is a good example of the State Highway Department’s utilization of a cantilevered suspended span configuration (TxDOT Structure No. 22-142-0-0018-09-040). Completed in 1938, the 1,226-foot-long bridge features a 291-foot-long riveted cantilever-suspended span over the main channel of the river and is ornamented with special design steel railing. Only a small number of cantilever-suspended bridges were constructed by the state between 1934 and 1948. Corrosion problems affecting the connections and refinements in field-welding techniques soon rendered this technology obsolete.

Facts 

Overview
Steel stringer bridge over Nueces River on I-35 Bus Loop
Location
La Salle County, Texas
Status
Open to traffic
History
Built 1938
Builder
- H. B. Zachry Co. of Laredo, Texas
Design
Steel stringer bridge with cantilever design including suspended span.
Dimensions
Length of largest span: 90.0 ft.
Total length: 1,226.0 ft.
Deck width: 23.6 ft.
Recognition
Eligible for the National Register of Historic Places
Also called
I-35 Business Loop Bridge
Approximate latitude, longitude
+28.42525, -99.24169   (decimal degrees)
28°25'31" N, 99°14'30" W   (degrees°minutes'seconds")
Approximate UTM coordinates
14/476330/3144334 (zone/easting/northing)
Average daily traffic (as of 2013)
5,270
Inventory numbers
TXNBI 221420001809040 (Texas bridge number on the National Bridge Inventory)
BH 80706 (Bridgehunter.com ID)
Inspection report (as of August 2018)
Overall condition: Good
Superstructure condition rating: Good (7 out of 9)
Substructure condition rating: Good (7 out of 9)
Deck condition rating: Good (7 out of 9)
Sufficiency rating: 73.5 (out of 100)
View more at BridgeReports.com

Categories 

Beam (15,718)
Built 1938 (859)
Built during 1930s (11,749)
Cantilevered (306)
H. B. Zachry Co. (3)
Have street view (26,949)
Interstate 35 (21)
La Salle County, Texas (3)
NR-eligible (4,053)
 Nueces River (10)
Open (39,884)
Owned by state (15,994)
Pan American Highway (7)
Span length 75-100 feet (6,431)
Steel stringer (6,222)
Texas (2,471)
Total length 1000-2500 feet (1,883)

Update Log 

  • March 12, 2018: New Street View added by Nathan Holth

Sources 

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Comments 

Nueces River Bridge
Posted March 12, 2018, by Nathan Holth (webmaster [at] historicbridges [dot] org)

Eligibility report attached.

Attachment #1 (application/pdf; 56,391 bytes)