The Fair Oaks Bridge is a truss bridge over the lower banks of the American River, connecting Fair Oaks to the greater Sacramento, California region. The current bridge, built 1907-1909 at a cost of $63,000, is the third bridge at this location.
The first bridge, which opened in 1901, helped to transform the small semi-rural community into a turn-of-the-century agricultural powerhouse. The present bridge, built 1907-1909, helped to transform the citrus colony into one of the leading bedroom communities of Sacramento by the 1940s. It is now a pedestrian and bicycle-only bridge.
History
19th-century background
Brevet Brigadier General Charles Henry Howard and James W. Wilson of the Howard-Wilson Publishing Company of Chicago acquired rights to sell land from California Senator Frederick K. Cox and businessman Crawford W. Clarke in 1895. The Howard-Wilson Company had the land surveyed and mapped and began to promote Fair Oaks as one of their "Sunset Colonies". The Howard-Wilson Company advertised Fair Oaks as an innovative and growing citrus colony after destructive freezes in Southern California and Florida and a national depression hitting in 1893. Many of the purchasers were professionals and other friends of the investors. Thus, the Fair Oaks community became initially composed of mostly businessmen and other professionals, including bankers and engineers.
Three hundred permanent settlers resided in Fair Oaks by 1897 and bought land in 5, 10, and tracts at an average of $30 per acre. These pioneers planned to sustain themselves by planting and cultivating fruit orchards although the majority of them had little experience with farming. Promises of a bridge being built over the American River to better transport the new colony's fruit to the booming markets in Sacramento and beyond further sustained this hope. The following year, however, investment began to diminish and the Howard-Wilson Company withdrew from the colony and with it went unfulfilled promises of a bridge over the American River and railroad service from Sacramento.
Businessmen in Chicago and Sacramento who had an investment (land or fruit) in the newborn colony and Orangevale formed the Chicago-Fair Oaks Club in 1899. Local businessmen, including Valentine S. McClatchy (the co-owner of the Sacramento Bee), incorporated the Fair Oaks Development Company in 1900. These boosters shamelessly proclaimed Fair Oaks to be the "crown of the [Sacramento] valley", in the "heart of California". Together, in 1901, these two groups convinced the County of Sacramento's Chamber of Commerce, which McClatchy's business partners from Orangevale created and chaired, to build a bridge across the American River at Fair Oaks and persuaded the Southern Pacific Rail Road Company to build a railroad spur to the bridge. In the summer of 1901 the spur and railroad station were built. The station was named Fair Oaks Bridge Depot. The spur to the main line of the Southern Pacific Railroad Co. helped Fair Oaks farmers and fruit companies prosper by enabling growers to distribute fresh fruit to a vast market.
Three bridges
Fair Oaks grew rapidly with the completion of the Fair Oaks Bridge and the railroad line. This first Fair Oaks Bridge, however, was washed out in a flood in March 1907. An 850-foot steel cable was then borrowed from the Folsom Development Company to use with a ferry boat across the river. The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors also authorized the construction of a temporary bridge. Actually, Myrtle Shaw Lord, in his officially sanctioned history of the Chamber of Commerce, A Sacramento Saga: Fifty Years of Achievement—Chamber of Commerce Leadership, writes that after the flooding of 1906 and 1907 that the Sacramento Chamber of Commerce committed itself to dealing with the problems of flooding in Sacramento generally and sponsored the rebuilding of a bridge at Fair Oaks: "With destruction as a teacher, Sacramento learned an expensive lesson and determined there should be no repetition." By the end of the year the Western Bridge and Construction Company of Omaha, Nebraska began the double truss bridge that still survives and services the community today. In fact, because of its historical and architectural significance, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in September 2006.