They tried dynamite. On the morning of October 21, 1957, after the Calaveras and Tuolumne County supervisors sold the old covered bridge at auction, demolition crews set charges to blast it free from its stone supports. The explosions echoed off the canyon walls of the Stanislaus River, but the bridge held. It had been holding for nearly a century by then, through floods and bandits and the slow economics of toll collection, and it was not about to come apart easily. As the waters of the new Tulloch Reservoir rose around it, the bridge finally surrendered its foundations, slipping partially beneath the surface before workers could dismantle what remained. Some of the lumber ended up in nearby resort buildings. The rest of Byrne's Ferry Covered Bridge went under eighty feet of water, taking with it one of the last covered bridges in California.
P. O. Byrne -- Patrick or Peter, nobody was ever sure, since he signed everything with initials -- arrived at the Stanislaus River crossing around 1849, running a ferry for gold seekers heading into the diggings. The locale went by Waterville at first, then Poker Flat, a name that Bret Harte would later borrow for his famous short story 'The Outcasts of Poker Flat.' Byrne saw permanent profit where others saw temporary chaos. He chartered the Stanislaus Central Bridge Company with plans for a steel suspension bridge and even dreamed of a railroad from Stockton. What he got instead was a chain cable suspension bridge with a plank floor, completed in the spring of 1853. Before it officially opened, a team of oxen hauling a wagon decided to test it first. The bridge collapsed under their weight. It had been deemed structurally lacking and in need of additional anchor chains, but the oxen did not read engineering reports.
Byrne moved on to other ventures, including an unsuccessful railroad speculation that counted former California Governor Peter Burnett among its commissioners. The crossing, however, was too valuable to abandon. In 1856, the Table Mountain Bridge Company rebuilt a stronger span. It lasted six years before the Great Flood of 1862 tore it apart. California's central waterways rose to biblical levels that winter, drowning the Sacramento Valley under an inland sea and sweeping away bridges, towns, and livelihoods across the state. The replacement, built that same year by the Union Bridge Company headquartered in Sonora, was the covered cantilever bridge of Howe truss design that would endure for the next 95 years. Reinforced by an auxiliary arch, it proved far sturdier than its predecessors. Joseph Aldridge of Green Springs served as toll keeper through the 1870s, and Joe Pardies ran it profitably for years afterward.
Fred Burnham resented the bridge. A cattleman in the region during the late 1880s and 1890s, he drove his herds across Byrne's Ferry every summer on the way to mountain pastures, paying $25 to $30 each time. The toll grated on him, and the bridge's deteriorating condition grated more. In the way of ranchers who prefer action to complaint, Burnham circulated a petition demanding that Calaveras and Tuolumne Counties purchase the bridge and eliminate the toll. In 1902, the petition succeeded. The two counties bought the bridge for $4,000, and for the first time in half a century, crossing the Stanislaus at Byrne's Ferry was free. The bridge also carried more colorful traffic. The Californio bandit Tiburcio Vasquez reportedly held up a stagecoach running between Chinese Camp and Copperopolis near the bridge. Wells Fargo posted a reward, and a posse formed at Poker Flat, crossing Byrne's Ferry in pursuit. Vasquez escaped that day but was later captured in Los Angeles and hanged in San Jose.
By the mid-1950s, the Tri-Dam Project was rising on the Stanislaus, and Tulloch Reservoir would back water seven miles up the canyon, submerging the bridge site under eighty feet. The Calaveras and Tuolumne County Historical Societies, the Copperopolis Community Club, and the Native Sons of the Golden West launched what they called a 'DOLLAR' campaign, hoping to raise roughly $9,000 to relocate the bridge downstream to a lagoon where it could span a reservoir inlet as a tourist attraction. The California State Parks Commission endorsed the plan. A Tuolumne County rancher offered land. But the money never materialized, and the plan died quietly. What dynamite could not accomplish, rising water did. The bridge slipped from its supports as the reservoir filled, and crews salvaged what lumber they could. Three thousand feet upstream from where the covered bridge had stood for 95 years, a new concrete and steel bridge went up in 1958 at a cost of $458,355. It was functional, permanent, and entirely forgettable.
The Byrne's Ferry Covered Bridge site is located at approximately 37.89N, 120.58W on the Stanislaus River between Calaveras and Tuolumne Counties. The bridge itself no longer exists, submerged beneath Tulloch Reservoir since 1957. From the air, the reservoir and its canyon are clearly visible, with the replacement concrete bridge approximately 3,000 feet upstream from the original site. Best viewed at 2,000-4,000 feet AGL. Nearby airports include Columbia Airport (O22) about 10 nm east and Oakdale Airport (O27) approximately 20 nm west. The reservoir is part of the Tri-Dam system on the Stanislaus River.