After Sixty Years, a Fallen Bridge Leaves the River
The old Highway 49 bridge washed into the North Fork in the 1964 flood and sat there for six decades. This winter, the last of it finally came out.
American River Canyon Alliance
For sixty years, the North Fork American River carried the wreckage of a bridge.
In December 1964, a great flood tore through the canyon. Upstream, the Hell Hole Dam, then under construction on the Rubicon River, gave way during an atmospheric river storm and sent a wall of water and debris downstream. When it reached the confluence near Auburn, it destroyed the old State Route 49 bridge and dropped roughly 750 tons of steel and concrete into the river.
The debris was never removed. Congress had approved the Auburn Dam, and officials assumed a future reservoir would bury the wreckage underwater. That reservoir was never built. So the twisted steel stayed in the North Fork, decade after decade, a hazard to boaters and a scar across one of the canyon's most beautiful reaches.
Protect American River Canyons pressed county leaders to finish what the flood had started. In 2023, Placer County worked with former state Senator Brian Dahle to secure 8 million dollars in state funding, transferred through Caltrans to the county's Department of Public Works.
Crews began in August 2025. Using dive teams, heavy equipment, and temporary ramps cut into the canyon, they pulled out 450 tons of steel and more than 600 cubic yards of concrete. The work wrapped up in January 2026, and the Calcutta Falls trailhead, which leads to the No Hands Bridge, reopened.
"Today, you wouldn't even know the debris was ever there," said District 5 Supervisor Cindy Gustafson.
The river runs clean over that ground again. Project history and updates are at Protect American River Canyons and Placer County.