![]() DUPE AWAY ABANDONED TRACKS DRIVERSDrivers braced themselves on particularly windy days when they needed to dodge drifting foam from the salt ponds below. ![]() The roads had become so bumpy that driving through the toll bridge was often compared to a roller coaster by frustrated motorists. Its narrow two-lane design caused multiple car crashes that were often fatal. Instead, the Dumbarton Bridge Company, a private entity, constructed a two-lane toll bridge parallel to the rail bridge in 1927.īut it was riddled with problems from the beginning. Since its inception, the Dumbarton Rail Bridge had been considered for passenger travel. Most people wouldn’t guess that the Dumbarton Rail Bridge was the Bay Area’s original bay crossing, much less remember that it even outlived the region’s very first vehicular bridge. Courtesy of the Palo Alto Historical Association The bridge, which opened in 1910, fell out of use by 1982. By then, it was decided that the rail bridge would sit unused - abandoned in plain sight - for the next 40 years to come.Ī view of the Dumbarton Rail Bridge in 1990. The rail bridge continued to transfer freight trains from Stockton into San Francisco for decades, until the early 1980s rolled around and changed everything. Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Imagesįrom then on out, Newark and Redwood City were at long last put on the map. ![]() The sight of it brought a thrill, drove home the fact that San Francisco bay had been bridged and that San Francisco had been brought 40 minutes and 35 miles nearer the markets of the world.”Īerial view of Silicon Valley at dusk, including the Dumbarton Bridge over the San Francisco Bay, and portions of the towns of Palo Alto, Calif., in July 2016. ![]() “More than half of what has been accomplished was declared impossible and less than half of what has been accomplished can be appreciated by the lay mind. “The bridge rises a monument to the skill of the engineer and mechanic,” the San Francisco Call newspaper wrote in 1910. ![]()
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