Long before today's modern paved highways, rough, muddy wagon roads provided the only inland access to Oregon's coast, and travel north or south was often on the beach at a low tide.
Construction of a continuous coastal road, dubbed the Roosevelt Military Highway, began in 1919.
Construction of the Yaquina Bay Bridge began in 1934, as part of a Works Progress Administration project. When completed in 1936, the bridge provided a final link in Oregon's coastal highway system. Washington and California added their own highway projects to provide a continuous roadway from Canada to Mexico, today called U.S. Highway 101.
Oregon's numerous rocky headlands, mudflats, bays, and rivers presented great engineering challenges, and construction of the coast highway proceeded slowly county by county.
The Yaquina Bay bridge, designed by Conde B. McCullough, cost $3,301,016 and employs both steel and reinforced concrete arches. The project employed 220 men to pour over 30,000 cubic yards of concrete and fabricate 3,100 tons of steel.
Saving Oregon's Coastal Bridges
Oregon's coastal bridges are suffering from prolonged exposure to marine salts. Salts present in the aggregate used to make concrete during construction, combined with exposure to salt air have corroded the
rebar infra-structures. Corroding rebar cracks concrete and undermines structural integrity. This process is blamed for the demise of Wald port's Alsea Bay Bridge, which was replaced in 1991.
Oregon's Department of Transportation is addressing rebar corrosion with a process called
cathodic protection.
An enclosure is built and atmospheric conditions are controlled within it. Sandblasting removes damaged concrete and cleans corroded rebar. Damaged rebar is then repaired and made continuous before being covered with new concrete.
Finally, a special zinc coating is painted on the surface, and an electrical current is passed through the rebar. Engineers believe that this will cause the zinc coating to attract corrosive salts away from the rebar and protect the bridge.
The Cape Creek Bridge near Florence was the first bridge in Oregon to undergo cathodic protection.
Yaquina Bay Bridge is the second and Depoe Bay's bridge is the third.
Forty-one other bridges along the coast have also been identified as likely candidates for cathodic protection.
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