Great Northern Crews Race to Save a Columbia River Bridge
A Waterville railroad worker reports sixty men straightening a tunnel and reinforcing a Columbia crossing after engineers feared the bridge might slide into the river.
An employee of the Great Northern who has been engaged in railroad work in the south end of the county was through at Waterville yesterday. He reports a gang of sixty men at work straightening the tunnel at the mouth of the tunnel, and another gang at work on the trestle across the Columbia. A rare engineering experiment has been tried with success on the bridge work. In the construction of the bridge the framework was not extended over the end abutments far enough and was pronounced unsafe by the engineers of the road, who thought there was danger of the whole thing going into the river. In order to remedy the defect in the construction work a ring of men have been at work for some time past building solid cement abutments facing the old ones. An engineer of the road is reported to have made a snap survey through the Big Bend by the way of Willow Springs, crossing the Coulee at or near McCourtney's, up Pine canyon, and pronounced the route a very practicable one.
“A rare engineering experiment has been tried with success on the bridge work.”
The Great Northern’s push through the Big Bend was part of the rail building that remade Washington’s economy and townsites. The panic over an abutment that might fail is a reminder that the region’s boom depended on precarious engineering as much as on eager boosters.
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