Lambert Slough Bridge

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The Lambert Slough Bridge is one of the more obscure destinations the ongoing bridge project has visited (so far). Lambert Slough is a small side channel of the Willamette River, separating Grand Island from the west bank of the river, and this little bridge is the only way on or off the island. I figured I ought to at least take a photo of the bridge on my way to the state park on the island, since I'd already established that this project included bridges on the Willamette at least as far south as Salem, and bridges out to islands were fair game, since I'd done the Sauvie Island Bridge. So I pretty much had to do this one for the sake of completeness. And completeness it is, since with this I think I've covered every bridge as far as Salem, plus one in Eugene. Except for the Champoeg Road pipeline bridge near Newberg, and I've more or less convinced myself that it doesn't count.

As with the OR-219 bridge, there's no page for this bridge at BridgeHunter or Structurae or any of the usual bridge fan sites, but there is a page about it at UglyBridges.com. In which we learn it's a reinforced concrete deck girder bridge, built in 1964, and any historical significance was "not determinable at this time" as of 2009. At that time it was given a 64.2% structural sufficiency rating, which is decent (certainly compared to the Sellwood Bridge's 2% rating) but down from 87% in 1991, probably due to an increase in traffic -- although 428 vehicles per day still counts as light traffic, I think.

As mentioned in my earlier Grand Island post, the island is threatened by a proposed gravel mine, which is currently working its way through the courts and the county permit process. Since this bridge is the only way on or off the island, gravel mining would mean a steady stream of big gravel trucks. The county commissioned an engineering study of the bridge in 2010 that concluded the bridge could handle the truck traffic, although not everyone's pleased that Yamhill County would be on the hook for higher maintenance costs due to increased wear and tear.

Union Street Bridge

A slideshow on Salem's Union Street Bridge over the Willamette River. It was built as a railroad bridge in 1913, but the railroad abandoned it in the 1990s. The city of Salem later purchased it and converted it into a bike and pedestrian bridge. Which, as you can see in my earlier posts about the nearby Center Street and Marion Street bridges, is something that was sorely needed here. I visited on a cool, drizzly day with intermittent downpours, and even then there was a steady stream of people walking and biking across.

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If the design of the bridge looks familiar, it could be because it was designed by the Waddell & Harrington engineering firm, the same company behind the Hawthorne, Interstate, and Steel bridges in Portland. Unlike the bridges in Portland, the lift span on the Union St. Bridge no longer functions. In fact it hasn't been operational since at least 1980, when the railroad was still using the bridge.

There was a brief time in the late 1990s or early 2000s when it looked as if the lift span would have to be repaired, to accomodate the Willamette Queen river cruise ship during high river levels. I can't find a definitive link about the story, but as I recall under federal law the railroad would have had to put the lift span back into operation if any commercial user demanded it. However it turned out to be much cheaper to modify the riverboat, the only vessel that would have needed the lift span. Its smokestacks were the real obstacle, and they were actually purely decorative, so they were given hinges to fold down so the ship could fit under the bridge. As I said, I wish I had a link to pass along as I might have some of the details of the story wrong, but that's how the story played out as best as I can recall. Anyway, the lift span is another interesting relic of the brief era when commercial shipping was a dominant form of transportation across Oregon, before railroads and eventually cars and trucks assumed that role.

Since it's strictly a pedestrian and bike bridge, walking across is pretty pleasant, and there's a nice view of the river and the other bridges. You see a bit of the city too, but Salem has a fairly low-rise and unphotogenic skyline, apart from the state capitol, and the city just isn't oriented around the river to the same degree that Portland is. In addition to the bridge itself, on the West Salem side of the river you also cross a long elevated train trestle over land; I was coming from the downtown Salem side and turned around before walking the whole trestle (due to the whole intermittent downpours thing I mentioned), so I haven't personally seen where it ends up. The video I linked to above starts from the West Salem side, though, so you can see it that way, if you're curious.

Marion Street Bridge

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The next bridge in the ongoing project is Salem's Marion Street Bridge. Built in 1952, it's somewhat more attractive than the Center St. Bridge, but it's still not what I'd call a visual treat. The bridge supports have a sort of pointed arch motif to them, similar to Portland's St. Johns Bridge, but in this case I'm not really sure why. Maybe the designer was just a big fan of pointed arches.

One downside of being built in 1952 is that the pedestrian walkway (there's only one, on the north side of the bridge) is pretty narrow. I tend to assume that midcentury bridges are like this because designers figured nobody would walk anywhere in the future. I can't prove that, but it sounds kind of reasonable to me. Anyway, it's narrower than the Center St. bridge walkway, and walking across is just as noisy due to the heavy traffic. I did a loop starting on the Salem side, across the Center St. and back across the Marion St., and I'd have to say the only reason to do this (other than as your daily commute, I suppose) would be purely for the sake of completeness. I'd be very surprised if this pops up on anyone's list of Top 10 Things To Do In Salem.

Just to verify that, I started searching the net for Top 10 lists about Salem. Here's one, which doesn't mention anything about bridges. It does mention going to Portland as #7 on the list, which seems like cheating to me. It also mentions the A.C. Gilbert museum, which sits next to the west end of the Marion St. Bridge. So you'll at least see the bridge, and maybe even park next to a pointed arch. So there's that. Another Top 10 list is less helpful; it's either auto-generated, or was compiled by someone who'd never been to Salem. As far as it's concerned your options are either guided walking tours (lots of them), or river rafting. And not all of the options are even in Oregon. So you can probably ignore that list. A top 5 list actually mentions a lot more than five things to do. It even shows a covered bridge, and mentions the A.C. Gilbert museum. But again, nothing about Willamette River bridges. So apparently this is our little secret for the time being, o Gentle Reader(s). (We really need to come up with cooler secrets, quite honestly.)

Center Street Bridge

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Today's installment in the ongoing bridge project takes us south to Salem's Center Street Bridge. The present-day bridge is pretty boring; the one semi-interesting detail is that it's the fourth bridge at this location (the part about bridges is somewhat down the page):

1. Built in 1880, the first Center Street Bridge was the very first bridge over the Willamette River. It was short-lived, however, collapsing during a flood in 1890.
2. The 1891 replacement was built in a hurry and was considered structurally unsound almost from the day it opened. It still took the city almost 20 years to replace it, however.
3. The 1918 bridge lasted much longer than its predecessors; it was renovated in 1953 after the Marion St. Bridge opened downstream of it, and was finally demolished in 1969.
4. The current bridge dates to around 1969 or so. It's actually kind of hard to find reliable information about it. The Wikipedia article makes it sound like the current bridge dates to 1918, even though a quick glance makes it obvious that this isn't the case.

The bridge is four lanes of eastbound traffic, with a pedestrian walkway on the north side, protected from vehicles by a concrete barrier. There's a long spiral ramp up to the bridge from the Salem waterfront, while on the West Salem side the walkway descends into a tangle of highway exits and underpasses. I haven't tried locating the walkway from that side, but I expect it's kind of challenging if you don't already know where it is.

There's suprisingly little to see while walking across the bridge. You see the city's two other bridges downstream, and trees along the riverbanks, and the tops of some low-rise buildings, but Salem is really not oriented toward the river. It hasn't been a commercial port for many decades now, and the idea of chic riverfront cafes doesn't appear to have caught on. Certain Salem-based relatives would argue that the idea of chic anything would have a hard time catching on in Salem -- but I don't live there and I honestly don't know the place that well, so I'm not going to editorialize. I do have a link to pass along though; after the debut of IFC's Portlandia, Salem residents on Twitter began speculating about what a "Salemia" show would be like. The results were pretty amusing, though a bit depressing.

For some reason, one of the conventions around this ongoing bridge project involves warning you about various implausible hazards that might befall you while innocently strolling across the bridge. Based on past history, the most likely candidate would be the city deciding it's time to build the fifth Center Street Bridge, and start demolishing the current one while you're still on it. It's not a city that does anything quickly, though. There's a current proposal out there to build an additional bridge in the greater Salem area, and it'll be years before they'll even break ground on it, if they ever do. So chances are you'll have had plenty of warning -- months or years, probably -- plus I just told you there was a miniscule but nonzero chance it might happen. So can't say you weren't warned.

Wheatland Ferry

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Today's episode in what's apparently now a bridge and ferry project takes us to the Wheatland Ferry, a few miles north/downstream of Salem, OR at the tiny town of Wheatland. It's the same basic idea as the Canby Ferry, but busier; you pay while the boat's moving instead of prior to departure, probably to shave off a few minutes at the dock. At peak times -- summer and harvest time, primarily -- traffic tends to back up waiting to use the ferry. As this is the only river crossing of any kind between downtown Salem and the OR 219 bridge at Newberg, the Wheatland Ferry will likely be replaced with a bridge long before the other remaining Willamette River ferries. Not that it's all that likely in the near term; demand or not, a bridge -- even a utilitarian ugly one -- would still be expensive, and neither the state nor Marion County has a lot of cash lying around.

A 2009 Terry Richard column describes the ferry briefly, although he doesn't have a lot to say about river ferries that I haven't already covered here. There really isn't a lot to cover: You explain where it is, and tell the n00bs how to use the thing, and you might toss in a few snarky non-sequiturs if you happen to be me, which you probably aren't. You'd think there'd be a lot of fascinating history tidbits to share about the thing, given how long there's been a ferry at this location, but I haven't come across any yet.

The ferry does have a sorta-official website, although the page design is a retina-melting throwback to the Geocities/MySpace era. If there's a web browser out there that lets you disable tiled animated-gif background images, that would probably be the one to use. Failing that, welder's goggles would work, or you could try projecting the website onto a wall so that you aren't directly exposing your eyes to it. That's the safe way to observe a solar eclipse, so it might work for this website too. I note, in passing, that the link to their web design firm is a 404. FWIW.