Wednesday, May 14, 2014

The 30th Street Bridge in San Diego -- Post 307 for (Not So) Wordless Wednesday

I'm posting family photographs from my collection on Wednesdays, but they won't be Wordless Wednesday posts like others do - I simply am incapable of having a wordless post.

Here is a photograph from my grandfather's photo album in the Seaver/Carringer family collection handed down by my mother in the 1988 to 2002 time period:




This is a photograph of the 30th Street Bridge in San Diego that connects North Park to Brooklyn Heights.  I think it was taken in the 1908 to 1920 time frame.  Wikipedia has this photograph on their site - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30th_Street_(San_Diego).  The "Brooklyn Hts" written in the lower left-hand corner is my grandfather's printing.  I don't think that he wrote "30th St Bridge" at the bottom of the photo.

There is a streetcar on the Brooklyn Heights side of the bridge, running north (to the left of the picture).  There are only a few houses visible on the north side of the bridge.  

The bridge is a wood and steel trestle design, and had only two lanes, with the streetcar track running down the middle of the bridge.  There is a narrow sidewalk on both sides of the bridge.  I remember riding my bicycle across this bridge in the early 1950s, and always worrying that my tires would get caught in the wooden planks on the bridge, or that I would run over the trolley tracks.  

The bridge traversed Switzer Canyon that runs below the bridge and drains this part of San Diego into San Diego Bay through Balboa Park.  It was about 400 feet long.

The 30th Street trestle bridge was replaced in the 1950s with a causeway - they built up the earthen works to support the causeway and paved two lanes with raised sidewalks and low side rails.  The bridge was a lot easier to ride my bike across in the 1950s and 1960s, but the danger for bike riders was the passing cars.

Here is a Google satellite view of the area now, with the pin centered on the 30th Street Bridge.  Grape Street is at the bottom of the image:





I grew up on the block bounded by 30th Street (on the west), Hawthorn Street (on the south), Fern Street (on the east) and Ivy Street (on the north), but the whole neighborhood was my "playing field."  The 30th Street Bridge was five blocks north of Ivy Street.  As a kid, my buddies and I roamed this canyon, especially in the area west of 28th Street and at the foot of Grape Street.  The golf course was there, and we hunted for golf balls, spied on the golfers, built forts in the brush, and played Cowboys and Indians and hide and seek.  

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2014/05/the-30th-street-bridge-in-san-diego.html

Copyright (c) 2014, Randall J. Seaver


No comments: