The Atlantic and Pacific Railroad completed the first railroad bridge across the Colorado River near Needles on August 9, 1883. The wooden pile bridge stood at Eastbridge, about three miles southeast of present-day Needles, and connected the Atlantic and Pacific with the Southern Pacific Railroad.
The location proved poorly suited for a permanent crossing. Crews drove wooden pilings into the river’s deep, shifting alluvial soil, where floods repeatedly undermined the structure. The Colorado damaged or destroyed the bridge in 1884, 1886, and 1888, forcing the railroad to rebuild it each time.
In 1890, the railroad abandoned the Eastbridge crossing and rerouted its tracks downstream to the new steel Red Rock Bridge near Topock. The original wooden bridge was then dismantled.
Historic photograph and description -Huntington Library -mssMarston papers V103/0125 (colorized- wfeller)