Muir Trestle

Muir Trestle
use	Railway bridge
Crossing of	Alhambra Valley
place	Martinez , California
Entertained by	BNSF Railway
construction	Trestle Bridge
overall length	518 m
Longest span	30 m
opening	1900
	location

37.990277777778 -122.12791666667Coordinates: 37 ° 59 '25 " N , 122 ° 7' 41" W.

The Muir Trestle (also Alhambra Valley Trestle ) is a single-track railroad bridge over the Alhambra Valley south of Martinez , California . The Trestle Bridge was built in 1900 by the San Francisco & San Joaquin Valley Railroad over the orchard of naturalist John Muir . The connection from Fresno via Stockton to Richmond is now the Stockton subdivision of the BNSF Railway . The property and parts of the John Muir plantation are preserved in the immediate vicinity as the John Muir National Historic Site .

history

Muir Trestle of the San Francisco & San Joaquin Valley Railroad, 1905

In 1895 the southern portion of the San Francisco & San Joaquin Valley Railroad began, which reached Fresno in 1896 and Bakersfield in 1898 , south of Stockton . After the takeover by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF), the eastern part of Stockton via Martinez to Richmond was completed by 1900 , from where there was a ferry connection to San Francisco . The railway line ran south of Martinez over the Alhambra Valley, for which the orchard of John Muir had to be crossed. In 1897 the railway company acquired the rights from John and Louie Muir to build a trestle bridge on a 60 ft (18 m ) wide strip of the plantation , which should span the valley over a length of 500 meters. Muir and his wife saw new sales opportunities for their fruit through the connection to the railroad and were allowed to use the AT&SF routes free of charge for life. Construction work on the Muir Trestle , named after the family, was completed at the beginning of 1900 and the line went into operation in May.

After the death of John Muir, his daughter Wanda and her husband Tom Hanna continued to run the plantation until 1950. Today there is a transportation hub between the former home of the Muir family and the railroad bridge where John Muir Parkway ( California State Route 4 , east-west) crosses Alhambra Avenue (north-south). Of the over 1000 hectare plantation, only the historic house with around 130 hectares of surrounding gardens and wooded areas remains, which was placed under the administration of the National Park Service in 1964 as the John Muir National Historic Site . AT&SF merged in 1995 with the Burlington Northern Railroad (BN) to form the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway ( BNSF Railway ), which today operates the route from Fresno via Stockton to Richmond as a Stockton subdivision for rail freight transport .

description

The 518 meter long steel trestle bridge (scaffolding pillar viaduct) consists of solid wall girders that are supported by several scaffolding piers and lead the track level 23 meters above the valley in an east-west direction. The upwardly tapering scaffold pillars stand on concrete plinths, whereby six of these pillars consist of only one steel support on two bases each and the other six are made up of two interconnected supports on four bases each, which form steel lattice masts up to 20 meters wide; the solid wall girders between the pillars have lengths of up to 30 meters. Behind the abutment on the west side there is an approximately 90 meter long tunnel through an extension of Mount Wanda (named after the daughter of John Muir).

The tunnel through Mount Wanda, 1980

The Muir Trestle with its superstructure made of solid steel wall girders , 2006

The Muir House in front of the Trestle Bridge, 2004

Web links

Commons : Muir Trestle - collection of images, videos and audio files

BNSF - Muir Trestle. BridgeHunter.com

Individual evidence

^ Howard H. Letcher: Steam Railroads of San Joaquin County. In: San Joaquin Historian. Vol. 5, No. 2, 1969, p. 3 f.
↑ ^a ^b Jeffrey Killion, Mark Davison: Cultural Landscape Report for John Muir National Historic Site. Volume 1, National Park Service, 2005, pp. 115 f.
^ Railroad Construction: San Francisco & San Joaquin Valley. In: Railroad Gazette. Vol. 31, No. 26, 1899, p. 483.
^ ^A ^b Herbert I. Bennett: Extending the Santa Fe Railroad into San Francisco. In: Scientific American Supplement. Vol. 60, No. 1541, 1905, pp. 24685 f.

[1] Howard H. Letcher: Steam Railroads of San Joaquin County. In: San Joaquin Historian. Vol. 5, No. 2, 1969, p. 3 f.

[JMNHS-2] Jeffrey Killion, Mark Davison: Cultural Landscape Report for John Muir National Historic Site. Volume 1, National Park Service, 2005, pp. 115 f.

[3] Railroad Construction: San Francisco & San Joaquin Valley. In: Railroad Gazette. Vol. 31, No. 26, 1899, p. 483.

[Bennett-4] A ^b Herbert I. Bennett: Extending the Santa Fe Railroad into San Francisco. In: Scientific American Supplement. Vol. 60, No. 1541, 1905, pp. 24685 f.