Three Rivers has one river, the Kaweah, pronounced “kuh-WEE-uh”. Four forks come together into the Middle Fork, but apparently only three mattered when it was time to name the town. (No, I don’t know which three.) Middle, Marble, East, South, and North are the names of the various branches.
A week or two ago, I learned that the brother of two of my former drawing students took on something called a “bridge project”. He was commissioned to create four 2×2′ tile mosaics to decorate a new bridge somewhere in the county. I asked around and concluded it must be the bailey bridge at the upper end of South Fork Road. So, Trail Guy and I went exploring.
You can see evidence of the SQF Complex fire that burned a lot of South Fork, threatened Three Rivers, Case Mt. and Mineral King
Here is the bridge, going in just upstream of the old bailey bridge, and still just one lane wide:
You can watch Nate Norman talk about making these tiles on this YouTube video. (You might want to fast forward past the first few minutes of someone talking about Arts Consortium business and get right to Nate’s presentation.)
I did a screen shot from the video to show you one of his truly beautiful mosaics. As someone who has experimented with tile mosaic in the past, I can assure you that this was no small undertaking. 
We drove up near the bridge, but it was being worked on so I just took a couple of photos. I am guessing the tiles will go on each of 4 main pillars, one of which I have circled the spot in red for you.
The bridge is about 11 miles up South Fork Road, and I think the campground is one mile farther. We didn’t cross the bridge, but headed back down. It was such a beautiful day that I almost forgot about August. And heat. And smoke. And smog.
There were poppies, but they were closed up due to the overcast day. However, I did get this poor photo of a few wildflowers by kneeling in the mud on the side of the road.
You are welcome.
I do what I can to find the beauty in Tulare County, but not so much that people will flock here. Remember, we are uneducated, poor, unemployed, fat, and diabetic. Oh, and there is that bad air filtering down through the Altamont Pass from the Bay Area for which we get penalized. Further, there is no Trader Joe’s and never will be.
Just keeping it real.
3 Comments
Thanks for sharing. Those mosaics are gorgeous and I can’t wait to see them in place on the new bridge!
Dan, I too am looking forward to seeing them on the bridge. It does my heart good to know that occasionally effort goes into design.
Thank you for taking us on your walk! Overcast is good (cooler) and bad (anti-photogenic). It’s too bad you couldn’t walk across the bridge. That will have to be for another time. Maybe you can take photos of the murals in place!
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