channel with strong currents and frequent high winds. For decades, building a bridge across the Carquinez Strait was considered prohibitively expensive and technologically risky. Once the bridge was built however, driving from Sacramento to the East Bay became much more direct. The Carquinez Bridge provided a welcome alternative route from the Central Valley to the Bay Area, one that no longer required loading one's vehicle onto and off of a ferry. With the bridge completed, the Lincoln Highway was realigned to cross the Sacramento River, then proceed southwest through Davis and Vallejo, across the Carquinez Bridge, and along the shores of the San Pablo and San Francisco bays to Richmond and Oakland; becoming U.S. Route 40, and ultimately Interstate 80. After the Loma Prieta earthquake engineers determined that the aging 1927 span was seismically unstable, and that a retrofit was impossible. The decision was made to replace it with a new suspension bridge. The 1927 span was temporarily used to hold eastbound traffic while the 1958 eastbound span underwent a seismic retrofit, deck and superstructure rehabilitation, and painting to extend its serviceable life. The old 1927 cantilever bridge was dismantled three years after the opening of its replacement; with completion on September 4, 2007. A 3,000-pound bronze bell atop one of the bridge piers was removed and placed into storage. The bell will eventually be displayed in a new museum to be built at the Oakland end of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge. Parallel span (1958) At a cost of $38 million a parallel bridge was built just east of the 1927 bridge. The new bridge carried all traffic for a few months after it opened in November 1958, then after new ramps were built, the three-lane 1927 span, originally two-way, served westbound traffic while the four-lane 1958 span handled eastbound traffic. Alfred Zampa Memorial Bridge (2003 replacement span) At a cost of $240 million a new suspension bridge was built, to the west of the two earlier bridges, by the joint venture consisting of Flatiron Structures of Longmont, Co., FCI Constructors of Benicia, Ca., and the Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company of Darlington, England. This new bridge was named the Alfred Zampa Memorial Bridge, after an ironworker who worked on a number of the San Francisco Bay Area bridges, including the Golden Gate Bridge, and the original 1927 Carquinez span. The bridge was dedicated on November 8, 2003, and