New Rails at McCullough's Cape Creek Bridge

Conde McCullough, Oregon’s prolific State Bridge Engineer, was responsible for something on the order of 900 bridges constructed over the first decades of the Oregon State Highway Department’s effort to “Get Oregon out of the Mud!” that began in 1913.  McCullough has achieved near iconic status in Oregon, and in fact nationwide, for the combination of beauty and function that he brought to the task.  Many of Oregon’s most scenic places, at river crossings and canyons, benefit from his skill.  Nowhere is McCullough’s impact more noticeable than on the Oregon Coast, where what is now US 101 wouldn’t exist without the many McCullough-designed spans that cross the rivers and creeks draining into the Ocean.

Last week I was at the Cape Creek Bridge, at Heceta Head, just north of Florence.  While not as dazzling or well-known as the famed “Coastal Bridges” that span major rivers, Cape Creek is still a pretty spectacular design.  It’s probably fair to assume that some of the lessons learned here in 1931-32 helped guide the design of the landmark bridges that were to follow.  Cape Creek is also important for its recent history, being the first bridge in Oregon to benefit from “cathodic protection,” a nifty system where a low-wattage (900w) electrical charge is run through the all the reinforcing steel inside the concrete, providing protection against the salt-spray intrusion that doomed the Alsea Bay Bridge.

Unfortunately when that system was installed at Cape Creek in 1991, the bridge rail wasn’t included (it was likely already damaged).  Years earlier, in 1978, a standard “flex-beam” or w-rail had been installed to keep an errant vehicle from crashing through (lovely, isn’t it?).  Last week it was obvious that major elements of the starburst pattern railing (it looks really cool when the light comes through…sort of a shadow-picture) are literally crumbling away.

This week, through HERITAGE,  I am working on findings for OBEC Consulting Engineers, of Eugene, to document a project that will remove the damage and replace it with new, pre-cast, rail sections that will look almost exactly the same as the originals.  They will just be stronger.  And the reinforcement steel will be “tied” together electrically, so that ODOT can connect the rail to the cathodic system and assure it doesn’t crumble away.  AND, because the new rail and sidewalk are stronger, and meet code, we get to remove the lovely flex-beam!

Pass Creek Covered Bridge, Drain....Oregon's Oldest?

In the 1870s, if you took the stage coach from Scottsburg or the Willamette Valley to southern Oregon, the route went through an area north of Yoncalla, over Pass Creek.  To make that busy passage easier, somebody, probably the stage company built a bridge.  A wood truss, covered bridge.  A bit later, after Charles Drain purchased 340 acres from Jesse Applegate and set up what first became Drain’s Station and is now the city of Drain, the Oregon & California Railroad came through and followed the same route.  They too built a bridge over Pass Creek, another wood truss, covered, span.  The railroad replaced its wooden bridge with a new steel through truss bridge.  This much is certain.  Another thing that is certain is that the City of Drain, which owned the smaller covered span, relocated it for use as ped/bike bridge in 1987, where it remains, after replacing it at the original location with a mundane concrete slab.

But what isn’t clear, and is one of those gnawing little puzzles that drives me crazy, is what is the connection, if any, between the 1987 bridge and the 1870s bridge.  Most sources date the Pass Creek Covered Bridge, the only one of three similar bridges that stood in Drain, as having been built in 1925.  The problem is I haven’t found any primary sources to support that.  No ODOT drawings, no reports in the paper of “bridge construction.”  Nothing.  (Though I AM still looking!)  Several old-time locals report the current Pass Creek bridge (meaning the one that is now in the park) was built in 1906, or was “rebuilt” in 1925, using some portion of the earlier span.  There isn’t any documentation for either of those projects either, at least none that I’ve found.  Photos show that the design of the portal changed sometime after 1906, and the pitch of the roof was lowered.  Was that the “massive rebuild?”

 Here’s what we do know.  The existing bridge is just about the same size as the historic one and the trusses have hand-hewn top and bottom chords.  Now Drain, in northern Douglas County, was like so many cities in that region (especially ones on a railroad line), a mill town and it’s hard to believe that even in 1906, when there were multiple mills within a stone’s throw of the bridge site (Pass Creek provided water power) that anybody would take the trouble to HAND hew a chord.  And surely NOBODY would do that in 1925, so it seems logical that they reused the truss, and just changed the roof and modified the portal.  At least that's what I think.

At either 1906, or perhaps even the 1870s, the Pass Creek Covered Bridge may have a legitimate claim as the oldest covered bridge in Oregon  (the Drift Creek Bridge, in Lincoln County, was built in 1914).  Bill and Nick Cockrell, in their revised Roofs Over Rivers, the definitive guidebook to Oregon’s covered bridges, date Pass Creek as “1925 (1906).”  Fred Kildow, another covered bridge expert, in The BridgeTender, wrote “…this just might be the oldest continuously used covered bridge location in the state.”  And it just might.   If there is any of the 1870s bridge left, you might not need the “covered” limitation either.  I certainly can’t think of a standing bridge, any standing bridge, in Oregon built before 1880.  Can you?

Bridges, bridges, and more bridges

This Friday the State Advisory Committee on Historic Preservation will review the Willamette River Highway Bridges multiple property submittal.  This is a document on the significance of the ten major spans across the river in Multnomah County and includes the formal nomination of four bridges; Hawthorne, Morrison, Burnside and Broadway.  I started working on this project almost two years ago and in the process found a new appreciation for each of these amazing spans.  Almost every Oregonian knows the bridges in downtown Portland, from the “erector set” Marquam, to the soaring Fremont and most of us, I like to think, have our favorites.  They are an amazing group of spans, probably unmatched anywhere in the country, certainly on the West Coast, if only for their diversity.  From the Hawthorne, which is the oldest vertical lift bridge in the nation, to the St. Johns, the longest suspension bridge in the world when it was completed, to the Morrison, the first bascule bridge designed with open  piers to allow water to flow directly through them, Portland does bridges with panache.  It was fun to study these works, and honor to be able to document them for much-deserved recognition on the National Register of Historic Places.

If the Willamette Bridges are the pinnacle of bridge technology in the middle of Oregon (vying with McCullough’s coastal bridges for State-wide honors as a group), they surely are not the only spectacular spans in Oregon.  As I wrote many years ago, getting around the state Oregon, a state replete with creeks, rivers and crevices, without bridges would be darn near impossible.  And Oregon has always taken its roads, and its bridges, seriously.  We still do.  Covered Bridges, those comfortable, quaint, roofs over rivers were a popular form in Oregon where wood, just like rivers, can be easily found.  For years I have worked on the rehabilitation of numerous covered bridges, usually as a part of a team headed by the great guys at OBEC Consulting Engineers.  Together we’ve been involved with the rehab of award-winning projects like the Lowell Covered Bridge or, more recently, the Chambers Covered Railroad Bridge.

This week, on my way up to Portland, I will swing through north central Lane County, where the Deadwood Covered Bridge is soon to get a new shake roof and some other minor but much needed attention.  Deadwood, like so many of Oregon’s 50+ surviving covered bridges, has been bypassed by a typical slab, beam and girder (i.e. pretty boring) concrete span.  Thankfully the good people of Lane County had the vision, and the continued willingness, to retain the Deadwood, and a bunch of other covered bridges, for their history and charm.  Lane County has the largest collection of covered spans in Oregon, which as the largest collection of such spans in America west of the Mississippi River. 

Irish Bend Covered Bridge- Historic once again

In 1979 the Oregon SHPO approved a thematic study, a multiple property submittal, to list 46 of Oregon’s then 56 covered bridges on the National Register.  That document brought not only new appreciation for these quaint structures, but eventually access to funding through the Federal government and the Oregon Department of Transportation.  One of those 46 structures, the Irish Bend Covered Bridge, located outside Monroe, Oregon, was already in trouble.  The bridge, built in 1954 from 1920s plans, had been bypassed by a new road and the portion of the Willamette Slough that it traversed in this rural, agricultural, area had been shunted through a culvert.  Hardly romantic, but certainly functional and easy-to-maintain.

Benton County, which could no longer maintain the bridge with road funds, tried to find a good use for the span as interest in covered bridges grew.  They offered it to the City of Albany, which considered moving it to Bryant Park, and then to Multnomah County, who as Oregon’s most populous county felt disadvantaged by their lack of a covered bridge.  Neither offer came to fruition.  After what the Covered Bridge Society of Oregon termed “14 years of uncertainty,” the Irish Bend Covered Bridge was disassembled and the pieces were stored at the Benton County Fairgrounds.  Oregon’s State Advisory Committee on Historic Preservation did what such committees do when a resource is dismantled with no assurance it’ll be saved; they removed the bridge from the National Register in May 1989.

They may have acted precipitously.  Spurred by the situation, the Covered Bridge Society approached Benton County’s Board of Commissioners with the idea of rebuilding the bridge as part of the Campus Way bike path at OSU.  The location was perfect, crossing Oak Creek, out on the western end of the campus near the agricultural college’s barns.  It’s about as rural a location in the middle of college campus that you can imagine.  The County said “sure,” and offered to pony up a third of the funding (and the bridge) if the community could raise the remainder.  OSU agreed to the idea, funding and volunteer hours, much of it from off-duty Benton County Public Works employees and OSU staff, brought the bridge back to life, rebuilding the trusses, and replicating the damaged pieces carefully and accurately.  The rebuilt Irish Bend Covered Bridge was rededicated on November 13, 1989.

While the story has a happy ending, the bridge hasn’t been formally considered “historic” since May 1989.  As part of a project to better protect the bridge and do some minor work on it, Benton County is now going ahead and submitting a new nomination to again list the Irish Bend Covered Bridge on the National Register.  Oregon, today, has only 50 remaining covered bridges.  It will be good to see one more recognized by the National Register.

The Green Bridge of Sheridan

Sheridan is an incorporated town located between McMinnville and Willamina, on the South Yamhill River, in Yamhill County.  Platted in 1866, a major feature of the community from the start has been the bridge, connecting the business district on the south bank of the river, with the county road, what is now the Willamina-Sheridan Highway, on the north.  If you wanted to get across the river, you went to Sheridan, to the end of Bridge Street, and did.

The wooden bridge (there may have been more than one, Sheridan has a long and sad history of fire and flood) was replaced by a steel thru truss in 1910.  We know this from photos that show the bridge before the big fire of 1913, and from a short notice in the Oregonian about several Sheridan merchants that were upset about being assessed for the cost of the approach spans.  That first steel bridge was reportedly salvaged from its original location, across the Willamette River, in Portland.  Moving steel bridges around was an early form of municipal recycling.

But Sheridan prospered, despite the floods (there was a bad one in 1921) and the fires (another in 1922, destroyed most of the commercial district) and soon traffic outgrew the salvaged steel span that was probably 20 years old before it made it ever made it to Sheridan.  In 1939 the Mountain States Construction Company, of Eugene, put the finishing touches on Sheridan’s last bridge, a 131’ long Parker-design thru truss designed by the Oregon State Highway Department and funded in part by the New Deal’s Public Works Administration.  The Sheridan Bridge still stands, almost entirely intact, eight decades later.  Painted by OSHD as they painted most of their steel spans during that era, it’s affectionately known as the Green Bridge.

Sheridan has received funding to rehab the bridge, to improve its structural capacity for seismic, to repaint to protect the steel from the elements, and to keep it as the iconic landmark in downtown for a long time.  It’s a great project...and a fun one to document too.

The Bridges of Multnomah County

Back to working on Portland bridges again. There are lots of bridges there, across the Willamette, in downtown and after having drafted a context statement, a Multiple Property Submittal that covers ten of them, I am now nibbling away at the formal nomination of four spans owned by Multnomah County; the Hawthorne, Broadway, Burnside and Morrison.

Writing about these spans it is a struggle to avoid the use of superlatives. It’s an amazing collection Portland has put together, including works by some of America’s most renowned bridge engineers such as Gustav Lindenthal, Ralph Modjeski, David Steinman, Waddell and Harrington and Joseph Strauss. In Portland, between the upstream Sellwood and the downstream Fremont bridges one can find the oldest vertical lift span bridge in the United States (the Hawthorne), the ONLY double-vertical lift span in the world (the Steel Bridge), and the largest Rall Bascule bridge ever built (the Broadway). The St. Johns Bridge was the longest suspension span in the world when it was completed and, until very recently, the Fremont Bridge was the longest orthotropic tied-arch span in the world too. Each one of these bridges, aside from the incredible functional value that they bring to Portland, is in its own way something of a masterpiece, an amazing piece of engineering whether it’s the longest, oldest, first, or whatever other superlative that can be layered atop the simple fact that this is a great set of bridges. The fact that you can stand on one and, in most cases, see almost all the others, is just stunning.

We preservationists can be fairly cutting when the mood strikes. Efforts to save historic structures by relocating them in packs to safer, less pressured ground, are almost universally dismissed as “preservation round-ups.” In Portland, over the period of 1910 to 1973, the City, the County and the State of Oregon have effectively created what amounts to a “Bridge Round-Up.” And it’s a pretty spectacular assemblage.

Bridgetown

There are ten highway bridge spans across the Willamette River in Portland, connecting downtown with the eastside, and forming an important part of Portland's identity both economically, historically, and visually. The bridges standing today range in date from the 1910 Hawthorne Bridge to the Fremont, built in 1973. They represent a veritable "Who's Who" of American bridge engineers (David Steinman, Ralph Modjeski, Gustav Lindenthal and Waddell-Harrington…not to mention Joseph Strauss),  They serve as a sort of  one-spot shopping exhibit of bridge forms. There are deck trusses, vertical lifts, bascules, thru trusses, suspension and one of the longest tied-arch bridges in the country. 


Portland, a growing and bustling city, has continually "messed" with its bridges, to lengthen their approach spans, to widen their decks, to keep them a vital part of an ever-changing transportation system that began to serve trains, trolleys and foot traffic, evolved (or contra-wise) to serve automobiles and buses, and now, once again, in  some cases, again serves an electric powered trolley [MAX] along with cars, buses and bicyclists. One of the more recent changes involved the Morrison Bridge, built in 1958, and while that change was necessary to let Portlanders get across the river, it was determined to be an Adverse Effect under the Section 106 process. And, like all Adverse Effects, Multnomah County and the Oregon Department of Transportation had to develop a plan to "mitigate."

What they agreed to do, and what I am honored to be able to research and prepare on their behalf, is a National Register Multiple Property Submittal on the Willamette River Bridges of Portland. I have a little chart hanging in front of my computer, with each bridge's form, it's designer and "vital statistics" in an effort to keep them straight. So far it's only partially working but I'll get it eventually. I sure don't have any trouble remembering the St. Johns….an expensive, and comparatively under-used span that at least one historian termed a "mistake" from a financial standpoint. But it sure is a beautiful design.