Riverton Bridge is a two-lane road traffic

bridge A bridge is a structure built to Span (engineering), span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or railway) without blocking the path underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, whi ...

spanning the

Canning River The Canning River ( or ) is a major tributary of the Swan River in the South West Land Division of Western Australia. It is home to much wildlife including dolphins, pelicans, swans and many other bird species. Source and route With headwate ...

at Riverton, in

Perth Perth () is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of Western Australia. It is the list of cities in Australia by population, fourth-most-populous city in Australia, with a population of over 2.3 million within Greater Perth . The ...

, Western Australia. It was originally built in 1911 and known as the Watts Road Bridge, being renamed to Riverton Bridge in 1916. By the 1930s the bridge had fallen into disrepair. In 1954 it was replaced with the current structure, which is slightly upstream of the original. Part of the original bridge was kept as a swimming jetty, but this was demolished in 1980 for safety reasons. Until the 1970s the bridge formed part of the major east–west road system south of the Canning River and was part of what was then High Road between

Fremantle Fremantle () () is a port city in Western Australia located at the mouth of the Swan River (Western Australia), Swan River in the metropolitan area of Perth, the state capital. Fremantle Harbour serves as the port of Perth. The Western Australi ...

and Cannington. In 1978, High Road was upgraded and realigned to become

Leach Highway Leach Highway is a east-west arterial highway in the southern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia, primarily linking Kewdale, Western Australia, Kewdale and Perth Airport with the city of Fremantle. It is allocated State Route 7 and is a dual ...

, and as part of that project the concrete four-lane Shelley Bridge was built appropriately downstream. Since then, Riverton Bridge has been used for mainly local traffic. In 1937 the suburb of Riverton was informally called Riverton Bridge to avoid confusion with the

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a States and territories of Australia, state in the southern central part of Australia. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, which in ...

n town of Riverton.

References

Further reading