UPDATED 4:35 p.m. 12/10/2024 – Caltrans has canceled the overnight closure of the Jack Peters Creek bridge scheduled for Wednesday night but does plan to go forward with the closure Thursday night. The overnight closures have been postponed and rescheduled at least four times. This has confounded people making overnight plans as well as the county, which has been trying to place signage telling trucks to stay off county roads as detours. The hours of closure, 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. on Thursday, remain unchanged.
Said Caltrans spokesman Manny Machado, “The closure scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 12 from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. is anticipated to occur as planned. This will allow a crane positioned on the bridge for falsework installation. The closure is weather-dependent and subject to change.” No kidding.
MENDOCINO CO., 12/3/24 – Those who plan to travel between Fort Bragg and Mendocino on Dec. 11-12, 10 p.m.-6 a.m., might want to pack a chainsaw. Trees sometimes fall on the detour loop around the Jack Peters Creek Bridge, the span just north of the town of Mendocino, which will be closed to all but ambulance traffic for those two nights.
At this point, Caltrans has delayed the overnight closures or changed the dates four times. Agency spokesman Manny Machado said Caltrans needed more time to prepare the falsework, a temporary superstructure that will be installed to do required repairs to the bridge, widening the deck and putting in new railings.
Mendocino County Department of Transportation Director Howard Dashiell hopes extra time before the closure will allow the county and Caltrans to figure out better detours. Dashiell is worried that travelers could get lost on roads that turn from pavement to gravel and back to pavement. Unmarked forks baffle any traveler. Google Maps doesn’t work in the backcountry. He says a good reason state agencies could help with a better detour is that a big truck might try the detour, which could end in catastrophe.
The way around the bridge from the north involves going east on Road 409, located at the southern end of the Caspar Creek Bridge, and following that road to the end, then cutting through forest roads until those roads come to Road 408, which runs south and goes into Mendocino as Little Lake Road and then Lansing Street. Or, coming from the south, the reverse.
The problem came into focus on Thanksgiving night when a fatal accident closed the Caspar Creek Bridge. People wanting to go from Mendocino to Fort Bragg had to drive up Road 409 through the forest and then out State Route 20. Others found a shorter route down Fern Creek Road.
One woman, who did not want her name used, offered to lead a long line of cars through the forest, resulting in a nightmarish slow drive bouncing over potholes and navigating one particularly steep hill. She said she might have just slept in her car had she known what a harrowing adventure leading a parade of cars would be.
Others told similar stories but didn’t want to complain out of respect for 25-year-old Joe Garcia, a Fort Bragg man who died in the Thanksgiving night crash.
“An emergency like that is different than something that we can plan for,” agreed Dashiell.
Dashiell has been working on making detours safer for the Jack Peters Creek closure for several weeks.
“We finally got direct communication with Caltrans just before Thanksgiving,” Dashiell said. He was told by Machado that traffic had been measured and was very light during those hours.
The Jack Peters Bridge deck is being widened and its railings upgraded. A traffic signal has been in use for months, ensuring one-way traffic, but next Wed. and Thurs. nights will be the bridge’s first full closures.
Officially, Caltrans will be turning drivers around and sending them back the way they came. Initially, they said there was no detour available and advised people to plan to avoid the blockage. Since then, they have said the detour is looping through Mendocino and going back south. Cars coming from the north will be turned around before the bridge and sent back to Fort Bragg to utilize Highway 20.
This belies the reality that people aren’t going to want to drive 50 or more miles out of their way and the fact that most have phones that will suggest routes for which the phones, once out of range, stop providing directions. And in many rural places, these maps give bad advice, even when working. (This reporter tried two different phone apps on this route. One missed the forks in the road, and the second turned itself around and sent me back the way I came.)
“The Department of Transportation is concerned that out-of-area drivers might use their phone apps to find routes over CR 408 and 409 and try to go around,” said Dashiell.
This can be confusing as roads 408 and 409 intersect on dirt in Jackson Demonstration State Forest. “I am having Mendocino Department of Transportation crews place directional arrows in the Jackson Demonstration State Forest,” Dashiell said. He also said highway signs will be placed that read: “Road Closed to All But Local Traffic — NO Trucks.” These signs will be placed at the eastbound entrances of roads 408 and 409 at State Route 1. He has asked for support from the sheriff’s department, California Highway Patrol (CHP) and Caltrans. He hopes that the state agencies involved will follow through.
The CHP will not have an officer on site but will be ready to respond in case they are needed, said Ukiah CHP office spokesman Olegario Marin.
The Caltrans contractor for the job will install two message signs announcing the closure, one at state routes 1 and 20 in Fort Bragg and the other on State Route 128, just north of the Navarro Bridge. Machado said he would look into whether a sign will be provided on State Route 101 around Cloverdale to keep people from using State Route 128 with the intention of going north to Fort Bragg and beyond.
Is this detour a route that a local person would want to take?
Amanda Gray’s husband leaves home in Fort Bragg to arrive in Mendocino for work at 2:30 a.m. The couple decided to try the drive.
“For the sake of showing willingness, he and I drove the 409 to Little Lake detour during the day this last week and found it passable but potholed,” Gray said. “I don’t think I would want to take it in the middle of the night without a clear emergency need.”
They told his boss about their experience and the start time for work was put off until after the bridge reopened.
The issue was the subject of a lengthy discussion on the MCN listservs, with people arguing about which roads were closed and whether a four-wheel drive should be used.
Caltrans was criticized when it closed the Pudding Creek Bridge and offered only a two-hour detour loop that included Leggett and Willits to get from Fort Bragg to Cleone, a five-minute hop. Caltrans can’t suggest detours on backroads they don’t supervise, Machado said.
Local fire departments, the CHP, and county public works may provide help with traffic control. Caltrans said road crews will escort ambulances or other emergency vehicles through the work if that becomes necessary. In Fort Bragg, the hospital and the city were on alert during similar overnight bridge closures. The city had a plan for quick police or fire response using the Pudding Creek Trestle. As it turned out, there were no police, fire or ambulance calls. One elderly couple came down Pudding Creek Road to go into town for a minor emergency, and crews managed to accommodate them.
The Jack Peters Creek Bridge was built in 1939 using stimulus money from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. The replacement project will leave the base intact, as it is sound enough for another century. The new bridge will have much wider lanes, shoulders, and actual sidewalks. The project will also allow a spacious coastal trail upgrade to connect Mendocino with the upscale Surfwood subdivision.
Building the bridge was a big engineering challenge as it is a short bridge over a very deep canyon. The bridge superstructure remains one of the most solid on the coast, but the deck was the narrowest of any of the big bridges on the coast. A woman in the west lane riding a bicycle was once blown over the rail and down into the canyon by a vehicle passing in the other lane. Luckily she survived. The upgraded deck will have shoulders and sidewalks wide enough to walk or even bike on.
For more information go to the Caltrans site for the Jack Peters Creek project: Jack Peters Creek Bridge site.
Good signs indicating the route should be sufficient. I took it on Thanksgiving night, but only managed because one of my passengers had a good map on his phone which he had pre-downloaded. And there were a few times that the map was ambiguous. Signs would clear that up.
Large, clear signage should be posted on Hwy 1 at 408 & 409 intersections, also all along the detour. County responsibility?