Embedded Files
Stop #3: Tower Bridge
The third and most scenic stop on this journey in solidarity!
Let’s set the scene…It was 1933 and Sacramento’s population had boomed to nearly twice its size in 1910. This growth rendered the existing bridge inadequate to meet the needs of local and interstate traffic. City officials realized they would need a new bridge, one that could handle both vehicle and railway traffic.
In December that year the State of CA, Sacramento County, and the Sacramento Northern Railway held a conference to plan a new bridge construction project. It would need to be able to allow river boats to pass underneath and be sturdy enough to handle both vehicle and railway traffic simultaneously. This also created a challenge.
The project was initially estimated to cost $700,000.00, but the city didn’t have the budget alone. Neither did the County. Worse still, they were in the midst of the Great Depression, so how could they plan a project that would actually cost upward of $900,000.00 when over ¼ of the working population in the US was out of work?
However, Roosevelt had a Big Idea! President Roosevelt decided it was time for a new initiative, the First New Deal. This was a three pronged initiative, also known as the three R’s that focused on major contributors to the economic downturn:
Employment of Americans and the poor (Relief)
Recovery of the economy back to normal levels (Recovery)
Reforms for the Financial System (Reform)
New Deal Projects were managed through the Civil Works Administrations (created by the New Deal) which mandated that any project funded by federal money must only hire day laborers who lived within the county the project was in.
So the New Deal invested in Sacramento local communities by creating local jobs, stimulating the economy and creating economic stability. In this case the bridge project created 1500 jobs for workers directly employed on site, with 150 workers operating on average at any one time, and hundreds more who labored in the mills and shops rolling and fabricating steel used in the construction.
The Tower Bridge was thus constructed by the State Department of Public Works with the cooperation of the City of Sacramento, both counties of Sacramento and Yolo, and the Federal government.
This trifecta of local, state and federal government agencies and funding is nonpartisan and ensures that such significant projects can be achieved through collaboration and cooperation.
The George Pollock & Company was the construction company awarded the contract bid, and the design was created by legendary architect of the State Department of Public Works, Alfred Eicher.
Alfred spent several months sketching & refining the elements of the project before landing on the eventual design, which featured a vertical lift design to increase the width of the channel & decrease delays with an adjustable span that could be “raised or lowered at a rate of one foot per second.” This statement about its design is logged in the Library of Congress: “The bridge represents a rare use of Streamlined Moderne architectural styling in a lift bridge, making it an outstanding expression of the social and architectural climate of the period.”
The first aspect of the Towers to be built was the Concrete piers, after all without a strong foundation a bridge becomes weak and unable to support the burden of its role. Once that was completed, a temporary timber-and-steel bridge for railroad traffic — aka a shoofly — was built, and all highway traffic was sent upriver to the I St. Bridge.
The towers are 160 ft tall with 100 ft of draw up to accommodate passing ships. The lift portion weighs 1,040 tons but with an equal amount of counterweight, located in the towers, and two small 100 horsepower (75 kw) electric motors it can be lifted without issue.
Just 9 months later from the work start date, December 15th, 1935, then Governor Frank Merriam dedicated the bridge, and led the inaugural parade across it. 1000 homing pigeons were released to carry the news throughout CA. We have much faster ways of communicating good news across vast distances today.
The Tower Bridge was the first vertical lift bridge in the CA Highway System and is a major part of what makes it the shortest California State route.
The total cost of the bridge was $994,000 at the time, an equivalent to $21,500,000 today.
This bridge and its design came about because of a coalition of local, state and federal workers and initiatives supporting each other in one of the worst catastrophes to hit America. We’re in one of those catastrophes now.
Our economy is not great, and our citizens are losing their jobs for the false premise that it will save those same Americans money. How does losing your job save money?
This is why projects like this inspire us to see the benefit in building the foundations of interstate relationships, like with our sister State of Virginia. We support Virginians who are also struggling like we are, losing jobs, dealing with a strained economy and crashing market. Our State Bridges make us proud of our cities and what we are capable of when we work together.
It’s inspiring projects like the Tower Bridge that demonstrate our capacity for empathy for others, our values in camaraderie, and appreciation for our essential and government workers who ensure we have the infrastructure to survive hard times.
These projects also ensure that local businesses stay in business, and support many American Dreams of entrepreneurship. We must continue to protect ALL our Dreamers, as they are the future of this nation.
We are a nation of builders, not barons. These are our tax dollars at work. We support the use of taxes to lift up our local communities.
That’s also why we support the work of building community with other states who need our support to build a better America.
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