Calipatria, CA
Taken June 2006
SurvivingChecked on "as of" date (either in person or via latest GSV available), so can be assumed to be surviving at least as far as that date
as of Mar 2023
Update May 2025: GSV is a little patchy, but at least some of these suspendeds were surviving as of a couple of years ago.
Calipatria is a small town in Imperial County, California about 35 miles from the Mexican border. This picure is looking West on Main St, at the intersection with Hwy 111 which
runs up the east side of the Salton Sea.
At first sight this looks like a series installation of suspended NEMA heads. The closeup of the light in the lefthand top pic shows that this particular
one wouldn't work.
These fixtures clearly were series at one point, look at the insulators on the head, and the insulators on each side of the span wire.
Have a close look at the fullsize verion of this pic. It shows the pole at the side of the street that one of the spanwires is attached to. The spanwires for two separate
lights are at the very top of the pole. If you follow the wire from the one on the left, you can see it enters a short length of conduit, and reemerges further down where it is
connected via an ordinary photocell to the supply. So despite the hot and cold supplies to each fixture coming from different poles, it is still a line voltage system rather
than a HV series system. The conversion from series to multiple was done not by rewiring the fixtures as is normally done, but reusing the old series wiring and retrofitting
the fixtures with line voltage ballasts. All the lamps are HPS.