El Paso County begins process of replacing remaining timber bridges from the mid-1900s
Scott Harrison
EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) — The county has nine wooden bridges, also called timber bridges, that are at least 75 years old but remain in use.
A timber bridge on McClelland Road, just north of US 24 and slightly west of Calhan, will be the first of that group to be demolished and replaced.
The county is scheduled to start the project on June 16, which will close that section of the road for up to six weeks.
Officials inspected the bridges last year after the sudden closing and replacement of a timber bridge on Ramah Road West, several miles to the northeast, following an inspection that found evidence of rotting underneath.
The subsequent inspections determined that the bridges remain safe to drive on and that there were no significant or critical levels of deterioration.
County officials, however, want to replace those bridges before they become problems gradually.
Because the timber bridges are on gravel roads in sparsely populated rural areas, they don’t require as much construction as traditional bridges; the county replaced the Ramah Road West bridge with a low-water crossing and will take a similar approach with the McClelland Road bridge.
“We are going to replace it with a culvert,” said Amy Dahlberg, a county engineer. “We looked at various options. We compared a traditional bridge design with a culvert design. We found that if we did an in-house culvert design, we could more than fulfill the needs for a long-term replacement, and we could save costs.”
The projected replacement cost for the bridge is less than $100,000, she explained — millions less than other types of bridges. — and allows the county to have more money available to replace the others.
Jessica Riccardelli is the nearest resident to the bridge and said that she wasn’t aware of the upcoming replacement project.
“We drive it every day or every other day,” she said. “The condition, when we drive over it, makes noises. We always wonder if it’s going to crack or anything can happen. But it’s a good bridge. We’ve lived out here four years and never had an issue until we learned about this.”
Murphy Road to the north, and North Ellicott Highway to the east, are the detours for the project; Riccardelli said it will take ten minutes to get around it.