Bridge to Nowhere

Bridge to Nowhere

Day 10 (3/27/12)

 After breakfast our host Steve suggested we go have a look at the “bridge to nowhere”. Since we have done most of the more commercial attractions around the Yuma area on previous trips it sounded like an interesting way of enjoying the sunshine. It turns out that “McPhaul Bridge” is worth every cent of its admission price which is nothing. In the middle of the desert, spanning a river which no longer exists sits a smaller version of the “Golden Gate Bridge”. It turns out that it was designed by the same man who designed the Golden Gate Bridge and may have actually been a model for the much larger bridge. When it was built it spanned the untamed Gila River linking the mining operations of Castle Dome and the city of Yuma. Since that time the Gila has been tamed and then broken and now has been diverted off into irrigation canals leaving just a trickle of water that you could wade across flowing under the bridge. As Eileen stated, “It looks like some post-apocalyptic scene”. Of course I had to spend some time building in the rocks that surround the bridge. After checking out a little store, taking advantage of the tourist traffic at the bridge, it was back on the road to check out Imperial Dam the site at which the water of the Colorado is divided up into irrigation canals. It is both amazing and sad to see the mighty Colorado sliced up into concrete canals and diverted off to fields all over Arizona and Southern California.

Eileen and I at the Bridge

Fire Damage

Cairn at the Bridge

Colorado before Dam

Colorado after Dam

End of an Arizona Day