Redding's Sundial Bridge: A Pylon Over the Sacramento

The white pylon rising two hundred seventeen feet over the Sacramento River in Redding is not just a bridge. It is a working sundial, one of the largest on earth, its shadow sweeping across a plaza of broken Spanish tile at roughly one foot per minute. Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava designed it to connect the museum building of Turtle Bay Exploration Park to its two-hundred-acre arboretum on the far bank without planting a single support column in the river below, a requirement driven by the salmon that still spawn in this stretch of the Sacramento.

The entire seven-hundred-foot span hangs from cables attached to that single tilted pylon. The project was controversial in Redding, debated for years before the McConnell Foundation backed it. The bridge opened in two thousand four at a cost of about twenty-four million dollars and became one of the best known landmarks in northern California almost immediately.