The Carquinez Bridge

On my way over to my friend's house, I lucked out!

First a little history of the Carquinez Bridges:
According to Wikipedia,

The original bridge, a steel cantilever bridge, was designed by Robinson & Steinman and dedicated on May 21, 1927; costing eight million dollars to build, it was the first major bridge in the San Francisco Bay Area.

It was the construction of this first bridge that convinced financiers and engineers that it was possible to build bridges in the San Francisco area. No initial Carquinez Bridge.. no Golden Gate, no Bay Bridge. (well, of course they would have come eventually, but this bridge started things rolling). In 1958, a second span was constructed to handle the increased traffic. Then after the Loma Prieda earthquake caused the specialists to seismically retrofit all the bridges, it was determined that this first bridge could not be retrofitted. Instead they built a third span.

This third span (a suspension bridge that is light and open and my favorite bridge!!) opened a couple years ago. Retrofitting and resurfacing of the 2nd span is complete. Now they are removing the original span.

Tuesday, I arrived near the bridge as the first section of the bridge was being lowered to a barge that will carry it away to Mare Island where they turn it into scrap.

Here is the same shot without the zoom. All the TV stations had camera crews set up there in the 10' of clear shot. They nicely, however, let me slide in front of a camera for my 2 shots.