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Sunnyvale's Newspaper

Photograph by Skye Dunlap

The new bridge at Baylands Park will allow visitors to meander through the marshes without disturbing the wildlife.

Boardwalk provides park's final touches

By Justin Berton

The salt marsh harvest mouse eats salty pickleweed and drinks brackish water.

Were it not a nocturnal mammal, visitors to Sunnyvale's Baylands County Park would have an excellent vantage point to witness the endangered species enjoying its favorite meal.

Last month workers put the final touches on the 5-year-old park when they completed a winding 500-foot-long boardwalk that extends over the seasonal wetlands, the feeding grounds for the mouse that is found only in the salt marshes of the San Francisco Bay.

"This is all for him," said park supervisor Julie Oliver, as she stood at the tip of the boardwalk that took two years to design and build.

The boardwalk was part of the master plan for the park, but stormy weather the last two years delayed completion of the project.

Oliver said the boardwalk will give bird-watchers and other visitors a chance to view the environment from a unique perspective.

"It allows people to go out there without having much impact on the very thing we are trying to preserve," she said.

And it wasn't easy to do, either.

Bruce Hill, a principal partner and designer for the Sunnyvale-based Lauderbaugh/Hill Associates, said the location made the project challenging.

"I don't think people could appreciate how difficult it was," Hill said.

Though the boardwalk appears to curve, it is actually an optical illusion. More than 150 straight segments precisely 7 feet, 3/4 inches long are set off by a few inches to give the boardwalk its shape. The mesh guarding, which fills the space from the handrail down to the walkway, is a plastic-coated material that could not be curved for the length of the bridge. The special mesh material needed to be strong enough to endure salt erosion, but soft enough not to injure birds that would possibly fly into it. The precision segments meant Hill and the pile drivers had to sink the 105 redwood pillars into the wetlands without missing their mark. They had a margin for error of only half an inch. To miss the marks would offset the curve and ruin the effect of the boardwalk.

"There were constant obstacles," Hill said of the project that took 180 calendar days to build.

The walkway is made of Trex, a durable plastic made from recycled bags and milk cartons that should last "at least 100 years," Hill said.

Oliver said the endurance will be key for the project, since more than 100,000 people visited the park last year.

"You could imagine what it would look like if a few thousand school kids a year walked through there," Oliver said.

Along the path, there are two observation decks where, if bird-watchers are lucky, they can view barn swallows, one of the park's summer residents.

Down below, the bright green pickleweed is the predominant plant in sight. Once the water level rises, pedestrians on the boardwalk will be just a few feet above the wetlands. When the level is low, as it will be this summer, viewers can see vegetation such as salt grass and brass buttons.

"Sunnyvale has gotten to be an urban place. Here, people can come out to a place that's a little bit wild and open space, to take a breather from their high-paced lives," Oliver said.

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, July 8, 1998.
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