Eagle Creek Railroad Bridge

Next up we're checking out the train bridge at Eagle Creek. I said something earlier about doing these in order, west to east, and we really are doing that, more or less, but we've already visited the ones at Moffett Creek and Tanner Creek, so we're skipping right ahead.

Unlike the last couple of posts in this series, this one definitely counts as a bridge, at least; it even had its own Bridgehunter page, back when that was a thing. Which is helpful because I can save a little time and just block-quote the page's 'Facts' section:

Facts 

Overview

Pratt through truss bridge over Eagle Creek on Union Pacific Railroad

Location

Multnomah County, Oregon

Status

Open to traffic

History

Built 1935

Builders

- Bethlehem Steel Co. of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (Fabricator)
- McClintic-Marshall Co. of Chicago, Illinois & Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Fabricator)
- Orino, Bell & Malcolm of Portland, Oregon (Contractor)

Railroads

- Oregon-Washington Railroad & Navigation Co. (OWR&N;)
- Union Pacific Railroad (UP)

Design

The Union Pacific Railroad Bridge at Eagle Creek is a two span bridge consisting of two standard Pratt through trusses. The bridge is of a standard style used by the railroads in the early twentieth century.

Dimensions

Length of largest span: 160.0 ft.
Total length: 320.0 ft.

Approximate latitude, longitude

+45.64046, -121.93121   (decimal degrees)
45°38'26" N, 121°55'52" W   (degrees°minutes'seconds")

Approximate UTM coordinates

10/583292/5054657 (zone/easting/northing)

Quadrangle map:

Bonneville Dam

Inventory number

BH 38508 (Bridgehunter.com ID)

About the design of this one, I will just note that the 'Design' field is just two sentences, and both sentences include the word 'standard'. Also note that the the year of construction listed -- 1935 -- is quite late for the Gorge, about 50 years after the rail line opened. This is because the rail line was relocated around that time to make room for Bonneville Dam. Or strictly speaking the reservoir behind the dam.

Regarding the firms credited with the bridge, a history page at Lehigh University says McClintic-Marshall was "the world's largest independent steel fabricating firm" before its acquisition by Bethlehem Steel Corp. in 1931, and goes on to note that the company also fabricated all the locks for the Panama Canal, while Bridgehunter credits the firm for a number of notable bridges of that era, particularly the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, plus some other lesser-known suspension bridges like the Anthony Wayne Bridge in Toledo, OH; The I-74 Bridge over the Mississippi River at Moline, IA, and the Mount Hope Bridge in Rhode Island. The last one was named 1929's "Most Beautiful Steel Bridge, Class A", by the American Institute of Steel Construction. Recall that the McLoughlin Bridge on the Clackamas River (which we visited wayy back in 2008) won the same award in 1933, albeit in Class C since it's a much smaller bridge.

Meanwhile the Orino, Bell & Malcolm firm was apparently as the local contractor that performed the actual assembly work on the bridge That firm is credited for exactly three projects within the Bridgehunter site, all in the 1930s, and all of which are related to the Bonneville Dam project: The viaduct over Tanner Creek; a train tunnel under Tooth Rock that I have no photos of; and the bridge here. Which kind of feels like an afterthought compared to the other two. They were on the hook for building a major concrete viaduct and digging a train tunnel and getting it all done before your tracks disappear under the rising waters behind the dam.

Since Brigehunter now only exists in Wayback Machine form, it appears the only info on the internet now (or at least in Google) about the company is my Tanner Creek Viaduct post along with a page about Clay v. Rossi, a court case stemming from the relocation project and surety bonds related to that work, which somehow ended up in the lap of the Idaho Supreme Court. And I'd tell you more about the case, but the text disappears behind a paywall before indicating who won the case or why, or (this being Idaho) even whether it was resolved the ordinary legal way like they do in other more forward-looking states; or maybe they did an old-fashioned trial by combat, with duelling pistols at high noon; or maybe they dunked both parties in icy water to see who sinks and who floats, on the theory that engineering is just a fancy type of witchcraft from out of state that involves lots of fancy math, so they might as well make a witch trial out of it. Or who knows, really.