Stark Street Bridge

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Today's installment in the ongoing bridge project takes us out to the Sandy River once again, this time to the Stark Street Bridge. Stark was one of the first roads on the east side in Portland, and generally follows the Willamette Baseline for much of its length. It extends all the way from the Willamette River to the Sandy, and originally sported milestones (some of which still exist) at one mile intervals along its entire length. At the Sandy end, the road winds down the hill to the river, and ends when it merges into the Columbia River Highway. Although the historic mile markers along surviving parts of the Columbia River Highway continue with the Stark St. numbering all the way to The Dalles, believe it or not.

This bridge dates to 1914, around the same time as the old highway went in. Apparently there was a ferry at this spot before that, and the original road alignment went more or less straight downhill to the river, and roughly straight back uphill on the other side on present-day Woodard Road. Those steep roads wouldn't have been paved at the time either, so it would have been muddy most of the year in addition to being steep. The newer road alignment along the river on the east bank of the bridge required a bit of blasting and excavation, apparently.

Although I just said "east bank", there's a geographic quirk here that's worth pointing out. The bridge sits on a bend in the Sandy River, so when you cross to the east bank of the river, you're actually heading north and slightly west.

Info from across the interwebs, mostly the usual suspects:

• Structurae
  
• BridgeHunter
  
• Byways.org has a historic postcard image of the bridge.
  
• Series of photos on Wikimedia from something called the "Historic American Engineering Record", which sounds like a fancy name for going around taking photos of bridges, basically.
  
• Photos by Mike Goff, Michelle Smith, Jodi Tripp, Richard Doody
  

There's one amusing bit of trivia to relate about the bridge. This isn't the first bridge at this location; the first was an extremely flimsy wood truss bridge that collapsed under the weight of traffic. The Oregon Highway Commission's 1914 Biennial Report described the current bridge and its ill-fated predecessor:

Located two miles from Troutdale, Oregon, over Sandy River, near the Portland Automobile Club House. This bridge replaces an old wooden structure which fell on Good Roads' Day, April 25, 1914, dropping a 5ton auto truck into the river.

The report even includes photos of the original bridge, both before and after it collapsed. It's not hard to imagine the cruel mockery that would have ensued had the Internet existed in 1914. I suppose it's not too late if you want to get in on the mirth and mayhem. Just copy one of the report photos and give it a meme-compatible caption, something along the lines of "GOOD ROADS FAIL". Upload it somewhere the cool kids can find it, and shazam, you win +1 internets.

Walking across is about the same situation as the slightly older bridge downstream in Troutdale, although the walkway is less rickety. If anything, it gets even less pedestrian traffic than the Troutdale bridge, since there isn't a public park right at either end of the bridge, and there's no sidewalk once you're on the east bank of the river. I don't really have any helpful safety tips when it comes to the usual "not dying" angle. If you're superstitiously inclined, you might want to avoid the bridge if they hold another Good Roads Day here. Not sure there's much danger of that; the practice seems to have fallen out of favor except for one town in New Hampshire that's kept the tradition alive semi-continuously since 1914. Same time of year and everything. So if New Hampshire falls into the ocean or has a civil war, or all of New England is consumed by an unholy Lovecraftian apocalypse or whatever, and we're colonized by the refugees, and they try to transplant one of their quaint and unironic New England festivals here, and you're of a superstitious bent, and you happened to read this humble blog and know there's something to be superstitious about, there are a lot of nice places you could be on that day that aren't this bridge. Yeah, ok, that's a real stretch, I readily admit that. But the rules say I have to come up with something, because them's the rules.

Sandy River Bridge, Troutdale

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This somewhat delayed installment of the long-running bridge project takes us back to Troutdale for another Sandy River bridge. This one carries the Historic Columbia River Highway over the river, and doesn't seem to have an agreed-on name of its own. I've seen "Troutdale Bridge" and "Sandy River Bridge", but there are other bridges in Troutdale, and others over the Sandy outside of Troutdale, so those aren't overly specific names.

The bridge dates back to 1912, making it the oldest extant part of the Gorge Highway. It looks it, too. I think they built it just barely big and strong enough to carry the occasional Model T, but today it gets ginormous luxury RVs towing ginormous luxury SUVs piled high with bikes and kayaks and sailboards and such. I mean, it's not actually falling down as far as I know, but I kind of feel sorry for the poor little thing. Except when I have to drive across it and there's oncoming traffic larger than a Vespa, in which case I'd curse its name if only it had one.

Walking across isn't so bad. There's a separate walkway on the south (upstream) side of the bridge. Granted it's made with extremely old wooden slats, and here and there you get glimpses of the river through gaps in the slats. So that part isn't so fabulous, really. But I've never heard of the slats actually giving way and dumping people into the river, although I suppose there's a first time for everything. In any event, once you're across there's no sidewalk along the Gorge Highway, and you'll need to walk on the shoulder to get anywhere, while avoiding the aforementioned ginormous luxury SUVs, so I don't think the bridge gets much pedestrian use. Bikes maybe, but not pedestrians.

It does, however, attract daredevils who jump into the river from here, on purpose, for fun, although getting back out of the river in once piece (or being found at all) is not exactly guaranteed. I won't spend a lot of time on this point, because a.) I've gone on about it before and already feel like I'm being a tedious scold and a founding member of the anti-fun police for doing so. And b.) I've found that when I write about places that get a lot of newsworthy, untimely demises (High Rocks and the Vista Bridge, for example), sooner or later there's going to be another one. Then the post gets a sudden flood of search hits, and I have to hurry and check it to see if it's reasonably tasteful under the present somber circumstances, which it quite often isn't.

Info about the bridge, from sources spanning the interwebs:

• Structurae
  
• Bridgehunter
  
• ColumbiaRiverHighway.com has an extensive history page about the bridge. It notes that the bridge was considered to be obsolete (and far too narrow) as early as 1930, and the bride deck system was replaced in the 1950s. Which I read as saying it's not really that special and historic, and could be replaced if money was available. They could always move it somewhere else, and/or turn it into a bike-only bridge, if people are really that attached to the thing.
  
• Two Waymarking pages
  
• City of Troutdale
  
• A moody Holga photo
  
• Wikimedia images
  
• Via Google Books, the April 4, 1912 issue of Municipal Journal and Engineer, with a line indicating Multnomah County was asking for bids on the project at that time. The line just above it, incidentally, is for the famous and historic Colorado St. Bridge over Arroyo Seco, Pasadena, California.
  
• Via the Washington State University library, a set of vintage photos (not online, sadly) with a reference to an "Auto Club Bridge" in Troutdale. Which may be a historical name for this bridge. Or it's some other bridge near Troutdale, past or present, in which case never mind.
  
• Intel's code names for upcoming products and technologies borrow heavily from Oregon geography. For example, the microarchitecture used in many of their current CPU lines is called "Nehalem", and its successor is codenamed "Sandy Bridge". But like everyone else, they don't specify which Sandy bridge they have in mind.
  

I-84 Bridges, Sandy River

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On a trip out to the Columbia Gorge today, I stopped briefly and snapped a few photos of the I-84 bridges over the Sandy River. This was pretty much for the sake of completeness in the ongoing bridge project. There's nothing especially distinctive or exciting about them, and they don't have sidewalks or bike lanes to enable the walking across part. I understand that, technically, you can take bikes on the bridge. Apparently you can bike I-84 for its entire length through the Gorge, according to this map & guide from ODOT. But, like several other freeway bridges I've covered (Boone Bridge, Abernethy Bridge, I-205 Clackamas River bridge), that's outside the scope of the project. Because, well, because I just don't want to, and I don't think it's worth it. So there.

The situation's about to change, though. ODOT is in the early stages of a project to replace both bridges with shiny new ones. We're told they'll be nicer to look at than the current pair, which is an easily achieved goal. During a recent redesign they added a dedicated pedestrian & bike crossing to the bridge plans. So that's nice and everything, although the project won't be done until 2013. Still, assuming I haven't departed for warmer climes by then, and I still have any interest at all in bridges at that point, I'll probably drop by for a look. The ongoing bridge project would be incomplete if I didn't, and we can't have that, can we?

Lusted Road Bridge

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The ongoing bridge project takes us out to the Lusted Road Bridge over the Sandy River, wayyy out in rural Clackamas County.

I wouldn't normally cover something this far afield, but this one's a Portland bridge, in a couple of ways. It's a recycled segment of the original Burnside bridge, moved from downtown Portland to this spot when the current Burnside Bridge was constructed. The city of Portland also owns much of the surrounding land. A Water Bureau facility sits at one end of the bridge, and a large water main crosses a second bridge parallel to the road bridge. On the other side of Lusted Rd. is Dodge Park, complete with an old-style Portland Parks sign out front, although the Water Bureau runs it these days.

The view you see in these photos will soon be just a memory, as the city's in the middle of a project to replace the above-ground water conduit with a tunnel deep beneath the river. As part of the project, the conduit bridge will be removed. In fact, the plan is to move the bridge to a new location, spanning the Columbia Slough at Kelley Point Park. And instead of carrying a big water pipe, it'll carry bikes and pedestrians. That's the current plan, anyway. I like the idea of things going full circle, in any case: One (or part of one) bridge is moved out to the Sandy River, and a century later its neighbor gets moved back to Portland, albeit the far end of town. Ok, so it's not precisely full circle, but reasonably close.

The ongoing bridge project does involve walking across whenever possible. Those being the rules, I parked at Dodge Park, walked across, and walked back. There's only a sidewalk one one side of the bridge, namely the side opposite the conduit bridge. It's kind of spindly and narrow, but the bridge truss is between you and traffic, and there really isn't all that much traffic, so it's fine, although there really isn't anywhere to go once you've crossed the bridge. The other part of the bridge project involves dreaming up increasingly fanciful ways of possibly dying on various bridges, which I present as important safety tips. It's not a very good gimmick, but I've done it enough that I'm kind of stuck with it now. So today's important safety tip is to not hang out on the bridge if Mt. Hood erupts, sending an enormous mudflow down the Sandy River, destroying everything in its path. The possibility of this happening is one of the reasons the water conduit's being relocated, so this one's somewhat more likely than, say, Confederate zombies on the Burnside Bridge, or swooning over all the Art Deco Gothicness on the St. Johns, for example.

I didn't come across too many references to this bridge; although it got here in an unusual way, it's not overly distinctive, plus it's remote and not heavily travelled. Couple of random items, though: I ran across a painting of the bridge, along with paintings of various other local bridges. I also ran across the city's rules on residents of this area directly connecting to the Portland water system. Apparently this was something the city agreed to early on in order to secure easements and so forth for the big water mains into Portland proper. But they've tightened up the rules over the years, with a grandfather clause for existing connections. I realize I may be alone in this, but sometimes I find it kind of interesting to look at rules and regulations and wonder how they got this way -- was the system being abused prior to 1974? And if so, how? Or did some unnamed party stand to make money off the rule change, raking in cash somehow as locals were forced to form local water districts and build their own distribution systems? How much of a political issue was this back in the day? If old Oregonian issues were online prior to 1988 it would be simple to go back and check, but I'm not quite enough of a Real Historian to go rifle through old newspapers on microfiche just to answer a question, or at least to answer this particular question. If you know more about this than I do, feel free to leave a comment below.

I can't declare Mission Accomplished on Sandy River bridges just yet. So far I've done posts on the Revenue Bridge further upstream, and the Sandy River Railroad Bridge at Troutdale. I've still got as-yet-unposted photos of two more, and of another bridge over the Bull Run River (which flows into the Sandy at Dodge Park). I took most of those photos the same day as the photos you see here. Which was almost a year ago now, and only now am I managing to get a few things posted. Come to think of it, I still don't have any photos of the I-84 bridge over the Sandy, although I seem to recall it's an ugly concrete bridge you can't walk across, so that's not exactly my top priority. In any case, I'll try to get the other bridge photos posted before we hit the first anniversary of me taking them, because that would be embarrassing.

Revenue Bridge, Sandy River

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Here's one lonesome photo of the Revenue Bridge up near Sandy, where Ten Eyck Rd. crosses the Sandy River. I took this on a day I was checking out other bridges in the area, and I'd originally planned to stop here and take a few photos of it too. But I didn't see anywhere to park, and there also doesn't appear to be any way to walk across safely --- there's no sidewalk, there isn't even a bike lane --- and there's also no convenient place to take photos of the bridge from the side or below, and on top of everything else it's not very photogenic anyway. So I think this one lonesome photo is going to have to do.

The bridge is actually very new, less than a year old at the time I'm posting this. Somehow, Clackamas County managed to find the money and then get the project done, without all the endless handwringing that characterizes bridge projects in Portland. The downside of this is that they seem to have produced a supremely uninteresting bridge. What, no "world class" design that we can't possibly afford, even before the cost overruns? What, no endless "visioning process", with hearings and committee meetings with every imaginable "stakeholder", the city promising each and every one of them the moon and stars? How is this possible?

In any case, the bridge is new enough that Structurae has nothing on it yet, although it does have a page about the previous bridge (which it calls the "Ten Eyck Road Bridge"), plus photos. And BridgeHunter lists the old bridge on its page of lost historic bridges for 2009. Calling the previous bridge historic is a bit of a stretch if you ask me. It only dated to 1952, and it doesn't look like it was anything very unique or special. I don't recall ever paying much attention to the old bridge when driving over it, although it's true that I wasn't interested in bridges at the time.

What's more, the old bridge wasn't the original bridge here. Far from it, in fact. There have actually been bridges at this location since the early pioneer days, before Oregon was even a state. And the story behind that also explains the bridge's funny name.

When I was starting to put the post together, I assumed "Revenue Bridge" simply meant that there was a toll charged to cross here at one time. I figured I'd crack a lame joke to the effect that another less likely possibility is that it was just named after someone named "Revenue". Which sounds silly, but it's actually true this time. As this Gresham Outlook story explains, Francis Revenue and his wife were the first pioneer settlers in the Sandy area, circa 1853, and for a time they operated a toll bridge at this location. The bridge was situated on the Barlow Road, the Oregon Trail's scary land route over the Cascades. So it would have been a very lucrative place to own a bridge, right up until the transcontinental railroad went in.

The Sandy page at MountHoodHistory.com includes photos of Mr. & Mrs. Revenue, both looking like they'd just wandered out of the Old Testament. Although that's generally true of people in photos from that era. Something about having to sit motionless for long periods of time while the daguerrotype camera slowly did its thing. The Revenues and their bridge are also mentioned in this account of traveling the Oregon Trail.

And this page fills in a few more details about the Revenues' operation. It mentions in passing that prior to the original bridge, emigrants had to ford the Sandy River as best they could. The Sandy runs fast and cold all year, and every summer it sees a few drownings of unwary swimmers and boaters. So trying to wade across with a covered wagon, a couple of half-starved oxen, and all your worldly possessions would have been challenging.

The Revenues, along with a couple of other family members, are buried nearby.

Still unexplained is the surname "Revenue". It's quite a rare surname, and I don't think I've ever seen it before. I'd imagine it's a case where centuries ago someone was given a surname based on his occupation (see Miller, Farmer, Cooper, Fletcher, etc.), although it's not clear what that would've meant. An archaic synonym for "accountant", perhaps? Royal tax collector, possibly? Or, just maybe, the owner of a medieval toll bridge?

Sandy River Railroad Bridge

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Believe it or not, the ongoing bridge project takes us out to Troutdale, to the rusty old railroad bridge over the Sandy River. Seriously, this whole post is about that bridge -- although fortunately it's not a very big post. This is what you get when you're willing to do trivial and uninteresting stuff purely for the sake of completeness.

It's a short post because there isn't much to say about it. There's a Bridgehunter page about it, which tells us the bridge dates to 1906. The City of Troutdale's history page says the shiny new transcontinental railroad arrived earlier, in November 1882 (a really big deal at the time, as you might imagine), so there must've been an earlier bridge on the site. I've never seen any photos of that original bridge, not that I've looked very hard. Ok, at all, quite honestly. But just speculating wildly I'd guess it was probably some kind of old growth wood trestle of some sort, it just stands to reason.



Elsewhere on the interwebs, here are a couple of nice photos of the bridge. And a page on Pixelmap mentions, but has no photos of, the bridge -- although it does have some of various other bridges in the area, so I figured I'd pass it along, I mean, if you're already as bored with the thing as I am.



It's fortunate that the rules (such as they are) only call for a visit, an attempt to walk the thing if it's not a railroad or freeway bridge, a batch of photos, and a post about the, uh, adventure. The rules don't specify that the post has to be of any minimum length, nor do they specify that the photos need to be interesting or numerous, and they certainly don't require me to act enthusiastic about the whole thing. In this particular case, I was on my way somewhere else and thought I'd take a couple of minutes to stop for a couple of photos. So I did, and then I continued on my way, end of adventure. Yay, adventures. Or whatever.