BIXBY CREEK BRIDGE - stock photo

Bixby Creek Bridge, also known as Bixby Bridge, on the Big Sur coast of California, is one of the most photographed bridges in California due to its aesthetic design, "graceful architecture and magnificent setting." It is a reinforced concrete open-spandrel arch bridge. The bridge is 120 miles (190 km) south of San Francisco and 13 miles (21 km) south of Carmel in Monterey County along State Route 1. The bridge is 714 feet (218 m) in total length, 24 feet (7.3 m) wide, with 260 feet (79 m) of clearance below, and has a main span of 360 feet (110 m), which places 50% of the total roadbed above the arch. The arch ribs are five feet thick at the deck and nine feet thick at the springing line, where they join the towers at their base. The arches are four and one-half feet wide. The bridge was designed to support more than six times its intended load. The two large, vertical buttresses or supporting pillars on either side of the arch, while aesthetically pleasing, are functionally unnecessary. Engineers of later arch bridges such as the Frederick W. Panhorst Bridge omitted them from the design. The Rocky Creek Bridge and the Malpaso Creek Bridge to the north are also open-spandrel arch bridges built of reinforced concrete.