Span of the Century-Old Honeydew Bridge Takes Flight Before Replacement
Video by Ghirardelli Associates.
On Wednesday, June 4, the Humboldt County Public Works Department began the long-planned removal of the south span of the Honeydew Bridge on Mattole Road. Built in 1920 with a distinctive green camelback truss design, the single-lane bridge has served generations of locals and travelers but is now making way for a modern two-lane replacement.
A piece of equipment crosses the south approach to the Honeydew Bridge. Note the old timber deck and green truss. [Photo by Laura Cooskey]
In a delicate dance of steel and cables, crews carefully lifted the approximately 130,000-pound south span, swung it slightly sideways, and placed it at a diagonal on the river’s edge atop plastic sheeting. Now that the span has been taken down, it will be chopped up into pieces. The vast majority of the steel will be melted down and recycled. Crews expect to begin dismantling the next span as soon as Monday.
Liftoff! [Photo by Laura Cooskey]
The bridge, deemed functionally obsolete and seismically vulnerable, will be replaced with a new structure built to modern standards. The project also includes a temporary detour bridge downstream to keep traffic moving during construction.
Crews carefully lower the south span of the Honeydew Bridge[Photo by Laura Cooskey]
The crews are working long hours to accomplish this engineering feat. If you know one, maybe let them know what they are doing is appreciated. They aren’t seeing much of their families while this replacement is underway.
On a personal note: this reporter’s son, Quinn Church, is an inspector working for Ghirardelli Associates who provide construction management services for Humboldt County on the Honeydew Bridge project, lending a proud Redheaded Blackbelt connection to this major undertaking.
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It is good to see that somewhere some structural improvements are going on. Living on a road not so slowly decaying into failure with even patching being long delayed, it gives some hope.
It would be interesting to follow the funding on how stuff gets done. With money being taken in taxes and fees from so many sources while different sources are spending on the same project, it has become impossible to know how stuff gets paid for.
The pictures don’t really give due on how massive that crane is, I saw just one of those track assemblies, it took up one low boy truck’s trailer, (length and width),and the track must have been as tall as a ceiling in an average sized home.
It was huge indeed. I passed the trucks bringing in pieces of it over the Bull Creek Road… better get out of the way for that! Here is a pic showing its height compared to the bridge etc.
But…but….what about the Honeydew Bridge Chump?! Best commenter on here ever!
(Sighs)… the bridge was fine. Been through 100 years of traffic, log trucks, sheep trucks, cattle trucks, and storms. Not many trucks on that road anymore… mostly cars and gro-dozers.
No rust on the steel. Steel is light weight, it stretches and recovers, very resistant to earthquakes… that bridge would probably last another 100 years.
Meanwhile, the Panther Gap road has multiple ‘single lane’ sections already. Stop signs, (but nobody stops). Pot holes that would swallow a (small) car. Lots of single lane road through the park. Really nothing to be gained there.
In the county, most of the Dope farms are going broke. Everywhere there are the decaying ruins of hoop houses. Like tumbleweeds, being blown in the wind… move the spent grow baggies.
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Oh well.
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BTW: That ‘pre-atomic’ age steel should command a high value for recycling.
The late Dick Creps grew up in Honeydew early enough to remember hearing the first crawler tractor in the valley. He always questioned the quality of reinforcing steel in the bridge piers. He claimed that when building the bridge they used mattress springs from an old whore-house…the steel was all pre-fatigued!
Whatever it was… worked !
And a thrill on a motorbike!
I still have nightmares about crossing that on a fully laden Road Glide Ultra. It was a commitment.
The bridge was still useable but as it was it could not be retrofitted to newer seismic and 2-lane standards without destroying it first. Not to mention it had considerable width and weight restrictions that motor vehicles from 100 years ago. Add to the fact the county was pretty much on it’s own for the financing and the state was not very generous in grant money, which is why the replacement will be just another aesthetically unpleasing river crossing. It will accommodate two lanes of traffic and a shoulder for bikes, of which there are quite a few riders that do that monster of a ride or just along the valley. Panther Gap road, with it’s own traffic is a never ending issue.
You said the county was on its own for funding. Do you know where the funding came from and how decisions on it were made?
It’s not that I have objections but I do know the road I most often use is at a point of scary decay and would like some sort of idea whether it will be fixed ever.
That was public info a while back and from a conversation with the county engineering department. I’ve a copy of them somewhere in my various hard drives. I’m not privy to everything that was ever discussed, but I have followed along for a decade on it. The county tried to get more money from the state but those requests came at a bad time: Covid got in the way. Being Mattole Rd is not a state road or under CalTrans authority, it’s all on Humboldt what they can dig up. The original plans put out some years ago had a replacement bridge in the style of the old one, just and obvious brand new version. But all of what was wanted didn’t materialize so we’re going to get a generic replacement.
Add to that on the Bull Creek side of the mountain, there are a couple new slide outs starting, one up near the canyon where the mail plane crashed years ago.
edit: I’d have to dig some to find which of our Measures paid towards it, over regular maintenance costs and grants, what of those there may be.
Beautiful, Kym! And what a cool video– glad it was made available.
This removal and replacement has been years in the making, and many pleas have been made for preservation, rehabilitation, adaptation of use to walking- and biking-only… and for whatever reasons, the end solution was to dismantle it. Little bits and pieces will show up in many projects, but nothing like the old Honeydew Bridge.
Note, in the video around 1:21 onward, the little orange figures in the lower right. They are the men pulling the bridge around to its diagonal position atop the black plastic. Supermen!
Wiw! This was an awesome feat! Thanks for letting me know about it!
Kym, give your son, Quinn Church, a shout and a thank you! These workers have nerves of steel and big bxlls.
The new bridge is pretty exciting! Or maybe it’s just that I have lived in the hills too long! Either way it’s exciting to me! I smile broadly everytime I think of it!
Ghirardhelli Associates is a great company — the nicest owners (Yes, friends of mine.) Good work!