Sundial Bridge, Redding, California, United States

Sundial Bridge, Redding, California, United States

Spanish architect and engineer Santiago Calatrava's Sundial Bridge stretches across the Sacramento River in Redding, California, linking the two campuses of Turtle Bay Exploration Park. Opened in 2004, the bridge for pedestrians and bicyclists also serves as a gateway to the Sacramento River Trail system, and its soaring backward-leaning mast with cables stretched like the strings of a harp, is a working sundial, said David J. Brown, a bridge historian and author of Bridges: Three Thousand Years of Defying Nature. The bridge is also environmentally sensitive to its setting. The free-standing construction allows the bridge to avoid impacting the nearby salmon-spawning habitat, as there are no supports in the water, yet its glass-bottom encourages public appreciation of the river, according to Turtle Bay Exploration Park. The Sundial Bridge is one of about fifty -- and the first built in the United States -- designed by Calatrava, writes Brown.