The Great Snake River Mountain Blast
A massive engineering feat near the Snake River Valley railroad, involving the demolition of a mountain side to straighten a treacherous curve.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
With-in a few weeks, an electrical spark will touch off one of the largest blasts ever exploded on the Snake River Valley railroad. This will occur on the summit tract at Kunt's Point, about 45 miles down the river. The expense of this blast will be about $10,000, with 100 kegs of powder being used. There is a long curve at this point, and by putting in a bridge from one spur of the left bank to the other, the road will be built in nearly a straight line. As the water is 100 feet deep and the fill is about 400 feet long, it will require 100,000 yards of filling before any bridge can be put in. For days past, an army of men have been tunneling at about 15 feet above the water line. The tunnel runs parallel with the river for 100 feet in the mountain side.
“With-in a few weeks an electrical spark will touch off one of the largest blasts ever exploded.”
This massive 1899 infrastructure project reflects the era of rapid, industrial-scale rail expansion in the Pacific Northwest. Today, such projects in the same region often focus on environmental restoration and removing obstacles to fish migration, rather than just blasting through mountains to straighten lines for speed.
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