Stevens Bar, or Stephens Bar, was a Gold Rush mining camp founded in 1849 at this upper Tuolumne River crossing. The first bridge over the upper Tuolumne River was built just above this point in 1857, but after the Great Flood of January 1862 destroyed it, travelers used a ferry boat until 1885, when a new bridge was built below Jacksonville. In 1902 the 1857 site was bridged again. Because that span would be submerged by waters impounded by the new Don Pedro Dam, a high-level span was built through a 1968 agreement involving the Modesto Irrigation District, the Turlock Irrigation District, and Tuolumne County, and it became part of the Tuolumne County road system in 1973.