Have you seen the amazing bridge that Redding built?

The Sundial Bridge has become the iconic image of Redding, CA

All photos and aerials by Doug Bardwell, unless otherwise mentioned.

The Turtle Bay area of the Sacramento River was the hunting, fishing, and gathering area of the Wintu Indigenous people until the influx of white settlers during the gold rush era in the mid-19 thcentury.

Mining towns began to pop up along the river as prospectors panned for gold. By 1872, the Central Pacific Railroad set up a station named after one of their land agents, Benjamin Redding. That brought more people, and the town began to flourish.

Fifteen miles north, the second-largest dam in the United States began to be engineered in the late 1930s. It would provide flood control, generate electricity, and manage water in the California Central Valley. But there was one problem: you need a lot of gravel for all the concrete to build a dam, and there was none at the proposed dam site.