Other side of Pope/Chaucer via the Wilderness Preserve

Downstream face of the Pope/Chaucer Bridge
Since it's easily viewed from Woodland Avenue, most of us are quite familiar with the upstream San Francisquito Creek channel and the upstream face of the Pope/Chaucer Bridge, but the accessing the downstream face requires a scrambling down from the Wilderness Preserve section of Palo Alto's Timothy Hopkins Creekside Park. The Pope/Chaucer Bridge has an estimated capacity of 5,500 cubic feet per second. The culvert is about 30' wide at the bottom. The downstream concrete case is about 44' wide at the top. The JPA's current plan to install a 9,300 cfs replacement bridge includes removing all the trees on both sides of the creek and widening the channel to 120' wide at the top. There is one huge oak on the Palo Alto side that is 21' in circumference at it's base - about 7' in diameter!
Upstream face of the Pope/Chaucer Bridge

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