Milky Way And 103-Year-Old Campo Creek Viaduct
What was once a creek is Highway 94 aka. Campo Road these days. I'm not sure how long ago the creek dried up (or was possibly dammed up?) and converted to a highway.
I've been wanting to do this shot for a while, but didn't want to bother with the drive. The other evening, however, I had a twilight real estate shoot in Chula Vista and this was only about a 45 minute drive from there. This location is pretty close to the USA-Mexico border. While wandering around in the dark here, I got buzzed at least three times by what I will assume were Border Patrol or other law enforcement helicopters. They flew by in total the dark with no exterior lights on each time. I'm fairly certainly they used night vision, zoomed in on me, and determined I wasn't an illegal border crosser and not a smuggler.
This steel railroad trestle is in Campo, California - a community in southeastern San Diego County. Shot on August 22, 2019. For the sky, I did a tracked exposure at 240 sec f/4 ISO 400 with a Canon 6D and Canon 17-40mm f/4L lens. For the foreground, I shot six exposures each at 60 sec f/4 ISO 2000. The structure is illuminated by passing traffic below.
This bridge is part of the San Diego & Arizona Eastern (SD&AE) railroad. Originally founded in 1906 as the San Diego & Arizona Railway (SD&A) by sugar heir, developer, and entrepreneur John D. Spreckels. Dubbed "The Impossible Railroad" by many engineers of its day due to the immense logistical challenges involved, the line was established in part to provide San Diego with a direct rail link to the east by connecting with the Southern Pacific Railroad lines in El Centro, California.
Spreckels donated the organ pavilion in Balboa Park in San Diego and built the Spreckels Theater building in downtown San Diego. He's one of San Diego's premiere philanthropists.
Some interesting trivia: In 1908, Adolph Spreckels, heir to the Spreckels’ sugar fortune (along with his brother John), married a woman 24 years his junior. Alma was apparently quite a babe. She called her husband Adolph her “Sugar Daddy.”