Braga Bridge, Fall River-Somerset, MA

Charles M. Braga Jr Bridge

My group at work changed floors; now we're located with the business folks (for whom we're the IT department), and I get to listen to the business folk talk about the business. And one mentioned the Braga Bridge.

My ears perked up, as they always do when bridges are the topic. But especially the Braga Bridge -- I knew that bridge. I had a picture of that bridge.

I got this picture on my way between two other bridges, neither of which I have written about. Because the pictures weren't great, the light was wrong... as they are with this bridge, the Braga Bridge, about which a haiku contest was run:

Six-lane thoroughfare; 

Minus two lanes of repair;

Four lanes of despair. 

— Jay Martineau, Westport

I grew up not terribly far from here, and some school trip or other got us visiting the Battleship Massachusetts, which is permanently docked on the Fall River side of the bridge (you can see it there, though the battleship gray blends in so perfectly with the water and the background that it's almost like it was designed to...)

Bizarrely, I don't remember this bridge from when I was a kid. I have no explanation.

Replica of the Iwo Jima Memorial

I shot the bridge from a really beautiful park along the Taunton River just up from the bridge and just below a rather ordinary bridge that I couldn't get any sort of picture of. The park is dominated by a replica of the Iwo Jima Memorial. I had no idea it was there. I love most being surprised by the things I find when I'm bridge hunting.

Brayton Point Power Plant

Across the river from the park is the Brayton Point Power Plant, which I assumed to be nuclear, but is actually a coal powered generating station.

The Braga Bridge is much longer than I show in the picture, but it's hard to get the entire bridge in a shot, and stitching all the pictures together doesn't look cool. It's all a deck truss bridge up until this Warren truss bit on the Fall River side... so in your imagination, draw an endless line to the right. The whole bridge is over a mile long.

I was going to head down to the USS Massachusetts and try to get a more oblique shot of the bridge... but then I noticed something in the distance behind the Braga Bridge.

OMG... what bridge is THAT?

THAT... is the Mount Hope Bridge in Bristol, Rhode Island. And it instantly became the next stop on my hunt.

What was the first stop? The reason for the trip in the first place?

It was a viaduct about which Wikipedia had said was almost impossible to photograph without trespassing. I took that challenge. Someday I'll let you see how it turned out.

Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge, Jamestown-Newport, RI

Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge from Naval Station Newport

I kinda suspected I'd find myself sneaking into the Navy base to get a picture of this bridge. This was the weekend of the America's Cup race in Narragansett Bay. I'd hoped that the America's Cup catamarans would be sailing up to and under this bridge, but the course went toward the Long Island Sound and not this way.

I still thought maybe I could get a picture of the boats with the bridge in the background, but after a few attempts at dealing with Sailing Week traffic, parking and tourists, I just gave up trying to fit the race into my pictures and went looking for the shot. Maps had shown that the best vantage point on Aquidneck Island would be from the naval base, and I didn't know their policy on letting tourists with no Navy business on base to take pictures.

So I parked a bit away and just walked on to the base (though not all the way to the guard station). Took the shots and left. But, damn. Those Navy folks sure like their boats.

Newport Bridge from Jamestown

The Pell Bridge is New England's longest suspension bridge. It has a Warren truss deck that rises up to 215 feet above Narragansett Bay. The two towers are an astonishing 400 feet high. You can see the towers of this bridge from the central rise of the Jamestown Verrazzano Bridge, which is kinda cool.

The toll is a walloping $4.00 in each direction. Not all bad news, though. One of the best views of this bridge is from the tollbooth, where the road curves around a cove. There is a rocky beach that sits too low to get the good picture. You'd have to take it from the car. I did not expect the view and didn't have my phone taking pictures from the dash. I got the picture above on my way off the island, and it's just... okay.

Pell bridge towers

CC-BY-SA-3.0/Matt H. Wade at Wikipedia

I also fell short on getting pictures of the cathedral-style towers as I crossed the bridge, so I am borrowing the shot from Wikipedia (with attribution!) just so I can point them out here. They utterly dwarf the traffic; I'd think they'd be happier if cars and trucks never sullied their pristine bridge.

It's hard to get a good picture of the bridge from some publicly accessible place. The east side of Conanicut(*) Island is probably the easiest place; there's lots of tourist and boating places. I just parked in a beachfront condo parking spot for the middle picture (actually a panorama of about a half dozen pictures). I parked in some marine supply shop's parking lot and walked into the Navy base for the top picture.

Newport is mostly interested in getting people to its shops and tourist attractions and not letting them hang around taking pictures of bridges. If you are interested in quaint shops and tourist attractions, Newport has you covered. 

(*) Connecticut and Conanicut sound so similar that they must be related... I thought... wrongly. Conanicut is named after Conanicus, a Narragansett Indian who gave permission for the English to use the island for grazing sheep. I'm betting he regretted that decision. Connecticut, on the other hand, is named for the Connecticut River, called "quinetucket" by the Algonquins.

The Algonquins