Skip to main content

California State Route 84 west from Interstate 880 over the Dumbarton Bridge

On a recent Bay Area trip I took California State 84 west from Interstate 880 over San Francisco Bay via the Dumbarton Bridge.


The Dumbarton Bridge is a 1.63 mile structure crossing San Francisco Bay near Dumbarton Point.  The Dumbarton Bridge is the southernmost bridge in San Francisco Bay and the shortest.  The current Dumbarton Bridge was completed by 1982 in a four-lane configuration and was expanded to six-lanes by 1989.

The original Dumbarton Bridge opened in 1927 and was built private money.  The 1927 Dumbarton Bridge was similar to the 1929 San Mateo-Hayward Bridge in that it featured a causeway structure and a center vertical lift span.  Like the 1929 San Mateo-Hayward Bridge the 1927 Dumbarton Bridge was purchased by the California Division of Highways in 1951.  The 1927 Dumbarton Bridge became part of Legislative Route 107 which already existed on both ends of the structure since 1933.  Said change to LRN 107 can be observed by comparing the 1951 State Highway Map to the 1952 edition.

1951 State Highway Map

1952 State Highway Map

LRN 107 and the 1927 Dumbarton Bridge would become part of CA 84 during the California Highway Renumbering of 1964.

1963 State Highway Map

1964 State Highway Map

The 1927 Dumbarton Bridge was mostly demolished in 1984 but a small portion of the eastern approach near in Newark exists as a fishing pier.

My approach to CA 84 west and the Dumbarton Bridge were from I-880 south.





CA 84 west enters the City Limits of Newark (Alameda County) west of I-880.  CA 84 west to the Dumbarton Bridge toll is a freeway grade signed at 65 MPH.


Heading west on CA 84 it is apparent some of the overhead signage has seen better days.


Tolls for the Dumbarton Bridge are collected on westbound CA 84 and are $6 dollars cash for a two axle vehicle.  The last Exit before the Dumbarton Bridge toll is at Thorton Avenue/Paseo Padre Parkway.








West of the Dumbarton Bridge toll the route of CA 84 largely falls below freeway standards and has a poor surface quality.  The speed limit over the Dumbarton Bridge is 55 MPH.









As the Dumbarton Bridge rises over San Francisco Bay it enters San Mateo County and Menlo Park.


The Dumbarton Bridge ends in Menlo Park.  CA 84 continues west over the San Cruz Mountains to CA 1 on the Pacific Ocean.  After crossing the Dumbarton Bridge I turned south on CA 109 on University Avenue.










Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Old River Lock & Control Structure (Lettsworth, LA)

  The Old River Control Structure (ORCS) and its connecting satellite facilities combine to form one of the most impressive flood control complexes in North America. Located along the west bank of the Mississippi River near the confluence with the Red River and Atchafalaya River nearby, this structure system was fundamentally made possible by the Flood Control Act of 1928 that was passed by the United States Congress in the aftermath of the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 however a second, less obvious motivation influenced the construction here. The Mississippi River’s channel has gradually elongated and meandered in the area over the centuries, creating new oxbows and sandbars that made navigation of the river challenging and time-consuming through the steamboat era of the 1800s. This treacherous area of the river known as “Turnbull’s Bend” was where the mouth of the Red River was located that the upriver end of the bend and the Atchafalaya River, then effectively an outflow

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third

California State Route 203 the proposed Minaret Summit Highway

California State Route 203 is an approximately nine-mile State Highway located near Mammoth Lakes in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Mono County.  California State Route 203 as presently configured begins at US Route 395, passes through Mammoth Lakes and terminates at the Madera County line at Minaret Summit.  What is now California State Route 203 was added to the State Highway System in 1933 as Legislative Route Number 112.  The original Mammoth Lakes State Highway ended at Lake Mary near the site of Old Mammoth and was renumbered to California State Route 203 in 1964.  The modern alignment of the highway to Minaret Summit was adopted during 1967.   The corridor of Minaret Summit and Mammoth Pass have been subject to numerous proposed Trans-Sierra Highways.  The first corridor was proposed over Mammoth Pass following a Southern Pacific Railroad survey in 1901.  In 1931 a corridor between the Minarets Wilderness and High Sierra Peaks Wilderness was reserved by the Forest Service for po