Riverdale Branch Railroad Ruins

Some time ago I noticed an interesting bridge ruin in the Kings River while traversing rural Kings County on Excelsior Avenue, I finally was able to look into what the bridge was on the 25th. Turns out the bridge that I was looking at was part of the Riverdale Branch Railroad which used to run from Hardwick in Kings County northwest to Burrel in Fresno County.

The Riverdale Branch Railroad was built by the Summit Lake Railroad in 1910 by was eventually absorbed by the Southern Pacific. There was another line running north out of Hardwick that was eventually consolidated via use the Riverdale Branch. The line was short lived with abandonment paperwork being filed in 1951. The tracks of the Riverdale Branch were removed from 1952 to 1960 with the old crossing over the Kings River being the only obvious structure that I've found to date.

As for Hardwick, essentially it is a ghost town these days out in rural northern Kings County. There is a really good piece online hosted by latoncalifornia.com which details the history of Hardwick:

Hardwick California History

Comments

Anonymous said…

The full name for this railroad was the Hanford & Summit Lake railroad owned by a man by the name of L.A. Nares Whom by which the small town of Lanare got it,s name and he lost the rail road in a poker game or so the legend goes this is speculation on the least degree. J.A. Green

6:07 AM

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population. The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two

Huey P. Long Bridge (New Orleans, LA)

Located on the lower Mississippi River a few miles west of New Orleans, the Huey P. Long Bridge is an enormous steel truss bridge that carries both road and rail traffic on an old-time structure that is a fascinating example of a bridge that has evolved in recent years to meet the traffic and safety demands of modern times. While officially located in suburban Jefferson Parish near the unincorporated community of Bridge City, this bridge’s location is most often associated with New Orleans, given that it’s the largest and most recognizable incorporated population center in the nearby vicinity. For this reason, this blog article considers the bridge’s location to be in New Orleans, even though this isn’t 100% geographically correct. Completed in 1935 as the first bridge across the Mississippi River in Louisiana and the first to be built in the New Orleans area, this bridge is one of two bridges on the Mississippi named for Huey P. Long, a Louisiana politician who served as the 40th Gove