Cut Stone Bridge

Cut Stone Bridge. . History , The Cut Stone Bridge before you was constructed in 1863 for one of the earliest rail lines on the peninsula, the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad, which ran between the two cities of its name until it merged with the Central Pacific in 1870., This area back then was largely farms and cattle ranches; however, knowing the railroad would change all that, the little bridge was built first class. By the mid twentieth century passenger service had stopped along this part of the line. The bridge and its rail line were abandoned by 1970, and then partly paved over to make way for suburban sprawl. The bridge was all but forgotten., Restoration , The Old Bridge was rediscovered in 1995 by surveyors preparing for the construction of the BART spur that runs from Colma to San Francisco International Airport. The venerable structure lay directly in the path of a tunnelized part of the new BART plan. The National Park Service declared the bridge an historic structure in 1999 and it was then eligible for protection. The bridge was carefully disassembled and removed to make way for the BART tunnel. When the tunnel was completed in 2002, restoration of the bridge began., The 105 “blue stone” granite slabs of the bridge, some five feet deep and weighing up to 1500 pounds, were shaped by hand in the nineteenth century. They all had to be reshaped, reinforced with steel for earthquake protection, and repositioned with mortar at the original site., Photo: Cut Stone Bridge before restoration