Salt River Bridge - Remote Connection to History

You are now in Gila County, on Tonto National Forest land. The blue sky stretches as far as your eyes can see. After driving for what seems like a very long time, you round a bend on State Route 288 about 30 miles north of Globe. A rocky cliff towers on your right and the soft burbling of the Salt River is heard on your left.

Suddenly a bridge comes into view: The Salt River Bridge. It's a weathered structure on pylons, set directly into the bedrock of the riverbank on the Upper Salt River. The concrete deck and steel pipe guardrails accommodate one vehicle at a time, just as they have since 1920 when this bridge was built.

It's a peaceful and beautiful area. However, beauty was not what the bridge builders had in mind when they selected the site.

According to ADOT's historic inventory description for this bridge, the story of this bridge, the lesser-known sibling to the Salt River Bridge on US 60, started in 1918. The newly formed Bureau of Public Roads, which eventually became part of the Federal Highway Administration, was searching for a spot to build a road through the Tonto and Crook National Forest. That road, now SR 288, would connect the Apache Trail near Roosevelt Lake to the town of Young and is known as the Desert to Tall Pines Scenic Road. A major part of that road would be a bridge over the Salt River, near the head of Roosevelt Lake.

By 1919, the bridge design was finalized and it began carrying traffic by the end of 1920. The Salt River Bridge is the earliest documented bridge built by the Bureau of Public Roads in Arizona, making it one of the first federal infrastructure projects in the state. ADOT's historic inventory description says in addition, the Salt River Bridge has a Parker truss design, one of four in the state.

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