MLK Columbia Slough Bridge

View Larger Map

For several years now, one of this humble blog's ongoing projects has involved bridges. I started out with Portland-area Willamette River bridges, and once I'd done posts about those I ended up doing bridges on the Columbia, Clackamas, and Sandy Rivers too. I've also done bridges in the Columbia Gorge (and there may still be a few of those that I've missed), as well as a bunch of bridges in Cleveland from a trip there a few years ago. I also recently found some lists of Portland-area bridges that local governments believe are historically significant, so I've covered a couple of those too. A few months ago it occurred to me that there were a decent number of bridges on the Columbia Slough, in N/NE Portland, and I could visit a lot of them just by walking the Columbia Slough Trail. None of them are really visually stunning, but some at least have a bit of historical significance. Case in point, the bridge shown above, which carries MLK (a.k.a. state highway OR-99E) over the Columbia Slough. Its Bridgehunter page describes it:

The Columbia Slough Bridge on OR 99E was constructed in 1916 as part of the Interstate Bridge project. The bridge features built-up steel plate girder main spans and the same decorative steel railing found on the 1917 Interstate Bridge over the Columbia River. The bridge was likely designed by consulting firm of Waddell and Harrington just like the Interstate Bridge located just a short distance to the north.

The 304-foot original portion of the bridge features four steel plate girder spans with two main spans of 77.3-feet and two side spans of 76.2-feet. In 1951 the original 44-foot wide structure was widened to 58-feet by the Oregon State Highway Department to accommodate another traffic lane. The new portion of the bridge has a different span layout featuring two 140-foot plate girder mains spans and reinforced concrete approach spans at each end of the structure. The total length of the widened portion of the bridge is 362.5-feet.

In other words, this bridge was a minor project by a very famous bridge design firm. They were the same company behind the Interstate Bridge (obviously), as well as the Hawthorne and Steel Bridges in downtown Portland, the Union St. Bridge in Salem, and the Columbia River Highway bridge over the Sandy River in Troutdale. Oh, and the 12th Ave. Viaduct over Sullivan's Gulch / I-84, near Lloyd Center, which counts as another minor project.

A July 1916 Oregonian article on the near-complete Interstate Bridge mentions the slough span briefly as a remaining to-do item, due to problems with the initial construction done there:

When the water falls sufficiently, a pier will be erected in Columbia Slough to replace the one destroyed by the shifting of the bottom of the slough on account of the tremendous pressure of the big fill at that point. Not until this pier is built can the girder spans across Columbia Slough be placed.

Other than a few traffic accidents, the bridge apparently hasn't been newsworthy since its construction. I suppose if they ever get around to replacing the current Interstate Bridge, this little bridge would be left around as the last surviving piece of the original project. At that point the bridge might come be seen as an interesting historic artifact. But given the recent cancellation of the Columbia River Crossing project, that day isn't likely to come anytime soon.

12th Avenue Viaduct

[View Larger Map]

Today's installment in the ongoing bridge thing takes us to another unlikely spot, the 12th Avenue viaduct over Sullivan's Gulch and Interstate 84, just south of Lloyd Center. I am not, generally speaking, interested in freeway overpasses as part of this project, but this is a somewhat interesting exception. The key thing here is that this bridge, and the ones further east for MLK and Grand Avenues, are much older than I-84, and were built when Sullivan's Gulch was just a ravine with a railroad running through it.

Even that, by itself, probably wouldn't be enough to merit a blog post, but it turns out this humble overpass is a minor design by the famed Waddell & Harrington engineering firm. They're better known for designing the Hawthorne Bridge, the Steel Bridge, and the Interstate Bridge here in Portland, the Sandy River Bridge in Troutdale, the Union Street Bridge in Salem, and (according to Bridgehunter.com) the OR-99 bridge on the Columbia Slough, and a railroad bridge over the Willamette south of Harrisburg. So this is a very obscure cousin of all those well-known local bridges, and many others across the country. It's not particularly photogenic, but the bridge railing does look a lot like the one on the Hawthorne, so there's at least a little family resemblance. And more importantly, it's very, very obscure. Gentle Reader(s) (yes, both of you) out there probably realize how much I gravitate to obscure stuff.

I was reminded of this structure recently when working on a post about the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Bridge #463 in Cleveland, oddly enough. I came across a blurb by J.A.L. Waddell about his dislike of the "jackknife bascule" design used by said bridge. I started reading his Wikipedia bio (which insists his firm also designed Cleveland's Detroit-Superior Bridge, which I'm not sure is true), and then wandered off on a tangent to see what else around Portland Waddell's firm might be responsible for. No sources I've seen actually mention the one pictured here, but I vaguely remembered seeing their name on a plaque on one of the Sullivan's Gulch overpasses, so I went back recently to figure out which overpass it was, and take a few photos of it.

As you might imagine, there isn't much about this one on the interwebs, and frankly I suspect there aren't a lot of interesting facts about it out there to be discovered. It has no Bridgehunter page, but it does have a page on UglyBridges.com, which mentions it has a sufficiency rating of 58.5 out of 100 (which is better than a lot of bridges around town), and (for some reason) it isn't eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, despite its advanced age. I did find one vintage mention of the viaduct while it was in the planning stage, in which Waddell & Harrington advertised in Municipal Journal and Engineer, Vol. 28, seeking a contractor to do the construction work. The project was described as:

Furn. material and bldg. steel viaduct for city over Sullivan's Gulch, E. 12th st.: six 32-ft and two 64-ft deck plate girder spans on steel bents, concrete pedestals and abuts; 40-ft. roadway; two 10-ft. walks.

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.

[View Larger Map]

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.

Sandy River Bridge, Troutdale

[View Larger Map]

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.
  

How to walk the Interstate Bridge (and not die), while you still can

View Larger Map

So I thought I'd go and walk across the Interstate Bridge a while back. Back in April, actually, and I'm only getting the post together now. And prior to walking the bridge, there was a span of several months between when I decided to have a go at it and when I actually did it. Everything about the Interstate seems like an enormous undertaking. It's a very long bridge, over a very wide river, and it carries a very busy freeway; the whole thing got to be quite a daunting prospect. If it hadn't occurred to me to break the adventure up and do the North Portland Harbor Bridge on a different day, I'm not sure I'd have gotten around to it yet, quite honestly. It's not the distance exactly; I'm not that out of shape. Finding a few free (i.e. meeting-less) hours on a sunny day was the problem. It doesn't actually take a few hours, but I hate feeling rushed when I do these bridge things. If you do that, you hurry through and don't notice everything you should, and you miss out on a lot of good photos that way.

So the plan for this adventure was to park in the 'Couve, walk across to the Oregon side, cross under the freeway, and walk back on the other side of the bridge. I figured this was an important detail because the northbound and southbound sides are technically separate bridges; the northbound one was built in 1917, and the southbound companion wasn't built until 1958. It's natural to think of them as a unit though, since they're two halves of the same logical bridge, they always open in unison, and the 1958 bridge was designed to look almost identical to the original -- which showed a remarkable amount of historical sensitivity, by 1958 standards.  And since I am who I am, it was crucial to walk both sides for the sake of completeness.  I'm sorry, it's just a thing with me, I guess.

Columbia River bridges weren't originally part of the ongoing bridge project, but I figured I ought to at least cover the Interstate before the Powers That Be tear it out and replace it. That's not going to happen quite immediately; the project -- which goes by the kinda-pretentious name "Columbia River Crossing" -- is supposed to cost billions and billions of dollars, and the handwringing has only just begun, and nobody's entirely certain where the money's going to come from -- but it's reasonable to assume the clock's ticking. Not everyone's sold on the idea, though, and there's a school of thought that suggests we don't genuinely need a new bridge, and building the big 12-lane beast they're considering will just drive suburban sprawl on the far reaches of the 'Couve, and in a few years we'll be back to the level of congestion we see now.

I don't have a firm opinion about the new bridge one way or the other, and I'm not convinced the interwebs need yet another angry blogger ranting and shrieking on about it, either pro or con. I have, however, gotten a bit tired of people heaping scorn on the existing bridge all the time. It's held up rather well for a bridge from 1917, and people have mostly forgotten what a huge achievement it was back when it was first built.  People of the era really poured their hopes and dreams into the thing -- it's fair to call it obsolete, but bashing it just seems kind of tacky.

As evidence of what a big deal the Interstate Bridge once was, consider the set of plaques at both ends of the bridge, which bear a variety of inscriptions.  Some list the contractors who built the bridge, or provide various vital statistics about it. Others carry quotations by various historical figures on the subject of bridges.  The Final Report by the engineers who designed and built the bridge includes copies of the inscriptions, which I'm reproducing here:

1915
THIS BRIDGE IS DEDICATED TO THE
CITIZENS OF OREGON AND WASHINGTON BY
WHOM ITS ERECTION WAS ORDAINED. IT WAS
CONCEIVED OF THEIR VISION, ITS FOUNDA-
TIONS ARE LAID UPON THEIR SACRIFICES.
THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE OF COURAGE, FAITH
AND HIGH ENDEAVOR BEQUEATHED TO THIS
GENERATION BY THE PIONEERS WHO WRESTED
FROM THE WILDERNESS THESE WIDE AND FRUIT-
FUL LANDS, IS BUILDED INTO ITS MEMBERS
OF STONE AND STEEL AND HERE HANDED DOWN
TO THE GENERATIONS THAT COME AFTER.

1917



THE COLUMBIA RIVER INTERSTATE BRIDGE
BUILT BY THE PEOPLE OF CLARKE COUNTY
WASHINGTON. AND MULTNOMAH COUNTY OREGON,
UNDER DIRECTION OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER
INTERSTATE BRIDGE COMMISSION, RUFUS C
HOLMAN, CHAIRMAN, COMMISSIONERS FOR
CLARKE COUNTY, A. RAWSON, CHAIRMAN. W S.
LINDSAY, JOHN P. KIGGINS. COMMISSIONERS
FOR MULTNOMAH COUNTY, W. L. LIGHTNER.
CHAIRMAN, PHILO HOLBROOK, RUFUS C. HOLMAN.
THE GOVERNOR OF OREGON. LEGAL ADVISERS.
WALTER H. EVANS, JAMES O. BLAIR. ARTHUR
MURPHY. CONSTRUCTION BEGAN MARCH. 191S.
COMPLETED JANUARY, 1917.

The "Clarke County" bit is actually not a typo. Despite being named for non-'e' William Clark of Lewis & Clark fame, the county was named "Clarke" until 1925. Which is kind of fitting actually. If you've ever read Lewis & Clark's journals, you've probably noticed their, uh, individualistic approach to English orthography.



THE COLUMBIA RIVER INTERSTATE BRIDGE
DESIGNED AND BUILT UNDER DIRECTION OF
JOHN LYLE HARRINGTON. KANSAS CITY, MO.,
WADDELL & HARRINGTON (NOW DISSOLVED ) ,L0 UIS
R. ASH & ERNEST E. HOWARD, CONSULTING
ENGINEERS. F. M. CORTELYOU. RESDT. ENGR.



CONTRACTORS: MANUFACTURE OF STEEL.
AMERICAN BRIDGE COMPANY. NORTHWEST STEEL
COMPANY. ERECTION, PORTER BROTHERS.
FOUNDATIONS. THE PACIFIC BRIDGE COMPANY.
EMBANKMENTS. TACOMA DREDGING COMPANY,
STANDARD AMERICAN DREDGING COMPANY.
PAVEMENTS, WARREN CONSTRUCTION COMPANY.



"OF ALL INVENTIONS, THE ALPHABET
AND THE PRINTING PRESS ALONE EXCEPTED,
THOSE INVENTIONS WHICH ABRIDGE DISTANCE
HAVE DONE MOST FOR THE CIVILISATION OF
OUR SPECIES. EVERY IMPROVEMENT OF THE
MEANS OF LOCOMOTION BENEFITS MANKIND
MORALLY AND INTELLECTUALLY AS WELL AS
MATERIALLY, AND NOT ONLY FACILITATES
THE INTERCHANGE OF THE VARIOUS PRODUC-
TIONS OF NATURE AND ART, BUT TENDS TO
REMOVE NATIONAL AND PROVINCIAL ANTIPA-
THIES, AND TO BIND TOGETHER ALL THE
BRANCHES OF THE GREAT HUMAN FAMILY."

— MACAULAY.
The Macaulay quote is an excerpt from a longer passage about bad roads and taxation in 17th century Britain. This is actually a comment on a website that presents the diary of Samuel Pepys in blog form, which is a clever and intriguing notion.



THE COLUMBIA RIVER INTERSTATE BRIDGE.
TOTAL LENGTH OF BRIDGE AND APPROACHES
4^ MILES. COMPLETED JANUARY, 1917. TOTAL
COST $1,760,000. THE BRIDGE OVER THE COLUM-
BIA RIVER 3,531 FT. LONG. CONSISTS OF ONE 50
FT. SPAN, THREE 275 FT. SPANS AND TEN 265 FT.
SPANS; AND CONTAINS 7350 TONS OF STEEL,
17.650 SQ. YDS. OF REINFORCED CONCRETE
DECK, 15.000 SQ. YDS. OF PAVEMENT. 21.600 CU.
YDS. OF PIERS SUPPORTED ON PILES EXTEND-
ING TO 160 FT. BELOW ROADWAY. THE TOWERS
EXTEND TO 190 FT. ABOVE ROADWAY.



"YOU MAY TELL ME THAT MY VIEWS ARE
VISIONARY. THAT THE DESTINY OF THIS COUN-
TRY IS LESS EXALTED. THAT THE AMERICAN
PEOPLE ARE LESS GREAT THAN I THINK THEY
ARE OR OUGHT TO BE. I ANSWER. IDEALS ARE
LIKE STARS. YOU WILL NOT SUCCEED IN TOUCH-
ING THEM WITH YOUR HANDS. BUT LIKE THE
SEA-FARING MAN ON THE DESERT OF WATERS.
YOU CHOOSE THEM AS YOUR GUIDES AND
FOLLOWING THEM, YOU REACH YOUR DESTINY."

-CARL SCHURZ.

The bio's worth a read. I'd never heard of Mr. Schurz before, and I had no idea anyone managed to be both an 1848 German revolutionary, and a Union general during the US Civil War, among other things. Of course you never read a lot about prominent German-American immigrants in history. World wars tend to result in that sort of thing being quietly forgotten, I suppose.



THE COLUMBIA RIVER INTERSTATE BRIDGE
APPROACHES

THE BRIDGE OVER OREGON SLOUGH. 1.137 FT.
LONG. CONSISTS OF ONE 115 FT. SPAN AND TEN
100 FT. SPANS. THE BRIDGE OVER COLUMBIA
SLOUGH IS 307 FT. LONG AND CONSISTS OF FOUR
75 FT. SPANS. THESE BRIDGES CONTAIN 1,725
TONS OF STEEL. 7.150 SQ. YDS. OF REINFORCED
CONCRETE DECK. 6,100 SQ. YDS. OF PAVEMENT,
5,700 CU. YDS. OF PIERS. THE EMBANKMENTS
HAVE A COMBINED LENGTH OF 18.000 FT. AND
CONTAIN 1,500,000 CU. YDS. PAVEMENT ON EM-
BANKMENTS 56.000 SQ. YDS.



"THEREFORE WHEN WE BUILD. LET
US THINK THAT WE BUILD FOREVER. LET
IT NOT BE FOR PRESENT DELIGHT, NOR
FOR PRESENT USE ALONE. LET IT BE SUCH
WORK AS OUR DESCENDANTS WILL THANK US
FOR, AND LET US THINK, AS WE LAY STONE
ON STONE, THAT A TIME IS TO COME WHEN
THOSE STONES WILL BE HELD SACRED BE-
CAUSE OUR HANDS HAVE TOUCHED THEM, AND
THAT MEN WILL SAY AS THEY LOOK UPON
THE LABOR. AND WROUGHT SUBSTANCE OF
THEM. 'SEE THIS OUR FATHERS DID FOR
US.'"

— RUSKIN.

The Ruskin quite is also inscribed on the floor of the Chicago Tribune Tower. And undoubtedly elsewhere, as you can probably imagine how this sentiment would appeal to architects. A few other uses of it here and there on the web too, apparently now including the humble blog you're currently reading.

It's hard to see all those and not develop a sentimental attachment to the bridge, regardless of how obsolete it might be. People always go on about how much they love the Hawthorne, and the Interstate is a very similar design, just a lot bigger. Ok, and with noisy triple trailer semis barreling past you at slightly over the speed limit (which can't really be helped, this being an interstate freeway). But on the bright side, there's actual bridge structure between you and traffic, which you don't get on the Hawthorne, so it's almost certainly safer. (Consider this accident from last June -- if a truck's going to lose a load of rebar, I'd kind of prefer to have something solid between it and me.) And there isn't a problem with bike congestion like the Hawthorne gets these days, so there's that. Plus the view from the bridge is something you won't see any other way, unless you're stuck in traffic on the bridge, and even then it's somehow just not the same. Watch the river from the bridge for a few minutes, and you'll quickly realize that the Columbia is a serious river, fast and wide and deep and quite unlike the (mostly) tame little Willamette.

For whatever it's worth, Wikipedia's list of rivers by length has the Columbia at #51 worldwide. If you sort that list by average volume (in cubic meters per second), it comes in at #26, or at #20 if you delete everything that's a tributary of some other river. Ok, so that's almost certainly wrong (since the list is missing volume stats for a large number of rivers), and meaningless even if it was accurate. But it should at least get across the general idea that this isn't some seasonal arroyo or lazy bayou here.

As a result, it's a long walk across the bridge. This can't really be helped; in fact, under current plans the new bridge will be an even longer walk, since it will have to be built in a curve around the site of the current bridge (which will remain open while the new bridge is built).

In addition to the length, access to the bridge is an issue. It's not obvious how to get to either end of the bridge, and I had to stare at Google maps for a while before figuring it out. The bridge walkways end practically right at the water's edge on each side. On the Vancouver side it's at least sort of close to downtown Vancouver. Columbia St. continues south from the downtown core a bit and curves under the bridge, becoming Columbia Way at that point. There are spiral ramps on each side leading from the street up to the bridge; as small and obscure as they look, they're your one and only way to get on or off the bridge if you're walking or on a bike. I think the street has sidewalks the whole way through here, and it's not all that busy, so it ought to be safe once you know how to find it. On the Hayden Island side, you have to navigate the Jantzen Beach freeway interchange and the adjacent maze of big-box suburbia, and once you're done you still aren't to the other side of the river. At that point you have to make your way to the North Portland Harbor bridge, and once you've done that you're in industrial NE Portland. You still have to cross the Columbia Slough too, and as of yet there's no bike/ped lane on the I-5 slough bridge. Denver Avenue is nearby but the road's in bad shape. If you're heading into downtown Portland, your best bet is probably to go over to the Expo Center at this point and hop on the MAX train. One more thing to point out: If you're going to be using the west walkway on the bridge, you need to cross under the freeway at some point on Hayden Island, since the harbor bridge only has a bike/ped lane on the east side. It starts right next to Hooters, you can't miss it.

A BikePortland article from last year claimed that the cities of Portland and Vancouver were working on a new map that explained how to get on and off the Interstate Bridge. I can't seem to find a copy of that map online though, so I don't know if they ever followed through on the effort. Maybe they just couldn't figure it out. The article does have a couple of "sneak peek" bits of the map, so maybe if you enlarged those in Photoshop or something you might get a useful map out of it.

Updated 8/13/2010: Ok, the map does exist, and they've even created an instructional video about crossing the bridge safely, believe it or not. The goods are here, courtesy of Metro.

Another problem for pedestrians, and especially cyclists, is that the bridge walkways are very narrow, and the railings are alarmingly low if your center of gravity is up at bike level. Another BikePortland piece discusses whether it would be better to just ride on the freeway instead. The (unusually sensible) consensus there is that riding on the freeway is an exceptionally poor idea. Which brings us to the obligatory "not dying" bit. Don't ride on the freeway, especially at night, thus getting smooshed by a triple trailer semi full of rebar going 75 mph, the driver too busy texting or surfing porn or whatever to notice you puttering along on your trendy fixie bike without lights or reflectors. If I can't convince you not to do this, at least wear a freakin' helmet, or at least don't wear all black. Or if you really must wear all black and not use a helmet for reasons of hipness, well... I was about to suggest you at least do it sober, but it occurs to me that if you're going to do something this monumentally stupid, you might as well be drunk or high when you do it. At least it won't hurt as much that way. And if you survive, and you tell people what you did, and they demand to know why you did something that dumb, you have an instant excuse they can't really argue with. Not that I'm trying to help with this or anything, because I'm not. So don't.

Also, if you're crossing the whole river you'll need to cross the North Portland Harbor bridge too, and the not-dying angle there involved rogue banana peels. So watch out for those too.

Anywayyy, that cheery bit brings us to the inevitable "stuff from around the interwebs" part of the post.

• The bridge has a Structurae page
• Washington state DOT hasa page about it as well.
• two pages at Columbia River Images
• A great Columbian article on the history of the bridge, complete with a spooky ghost story:
  

  
  "On foggy fall evenings there are rumors that a tall man wearing an overcoat and dark felt hat can be seen out walking on the I-5 Bridge. Stories say this is the ghost of Vancouver Major Grover Percival. Apparently, the despairing mayor walked out onto the bridge on election night in 1920 and never returned. He hung himself and it was a month before his body was found on Hayden Island."
  

  
  And sure enough, the list of mayors of Vancouver shows a "G R Percival" as mayor for a single two year term between 1918-20.
• A series of photos at Pernoctalian
• The Interstate gets a mention in a tour of local bridges at Jackieinpdx's Blog
• Vintage photos of the bridge, for sale at the William Joseph Gallery
• The PortlandBridges page about the Interstate.
  
• A moody pseudo-vintage photo on Corbis. I'd almost believe it was from the 1930s or 1940s, but for the contrail in the background.
  
• A construction photo in the University of Oregon archives
  
• A whole bunch of Flickr photos: [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ] [ 7 ] [ 7 ] [ 8 ] [ 9 ] [ 10 ] [ 11 ] [ 12 ]
  

...and the hawthorne bridge, finally...

So I figured that, for the sake of completeness, I had to cover the Hawthorne Bridge too. I initially wasn't going to, you know; I'd dismissed most of the downtown Portland bridges as "uninteresting" from a walking standpoint, and declared the bridge-moseying project complete. I've already declared Mission Accomplished at least twice now, and it doesn't seem to be helping.

I figured I needed a gimmick if I was going to make the Hawthorne interesting. Just playing tourist and taking tourist photos wasn't going to cut it this time. So I figured, hey, what I'll do is put the infrared filter on the camera, walk across, take a few photos, and hit the Roots brewpub. After a bit of tasty sudsy refreshment, I'll switch filters and put the UV-pass one on instead, and walk back the other way. There's a nonzero possibility that nobody's ever done this before, but I could be wrong.

In case you find it hard to tell, everything above the HR tag (the horizontal bar) is infrared, and below it is ultraviolet. And the slideshow at the top is just all Hawthorne Bridge photos I have on Flickr, including ones from long after I did the post you're reading now.


Incidentally, there were a couple of odd things I noticed around the east end of the bridge which I'd never paid attention to before. Or the east end of the approach viaduct to the bridge, which is not the same thing. There's a sign in the same unreadable dark-brass-on-dark-aggregate they used on the Morrison (hence no photo), telling us the bridge's East Approaches date back to just 1957, so they aren't really historic. When it's time to gentrify the area, we can tear them out with a clean conscience, like the city did with the Lovejoy Ramp some years back, and then we have room for shiny new condo towers. Hooray!

The other odd thing is how, at the very end of the east viaduct bit, pedestrians are shunted over a block to Clay St., and bikes get to stay on Hawthorne itself. Kind of strange, not the end of the world of course, and it actually puts you closer if you're heading to the Roots brewpub like I was. Just a strange little quirk is all.



Oh, I almost forgot -- I guess I ought to do a links section here, in case readers want actual useful information about the bridge.

• The bridge page at Structurae
  
• And the equivalent Brigehunter page too.
  
• Multnomah County's page about the bridge (because they own it, natch)
  
• And here it is on PortlandBridges, too.
  
• The Hawthorne has its own Flickr group. Not all Portland bridges have these; I imagine only the ones with fans do.
  
• A post at Portland Architecture griping about the bridge, particularly the fact that they have to raise it a lot. Which is true, sure, it does open a lot, and yes, it can be mildly annoying at times, I guess.
  
• Speaking of which, check out this cool time-lapse video of the bridge at night. It opens at one point, so you can see what that's like.
  
• More cool video about operating the bridge.
  
• And video of a typical morning rush hour on the Hawthorne. Look at all the bikes.
  
• A Bojack post worrying that they might build condos at the west end of the bridge instead of the proposed courthouse. Which I'm sure is a distinct possibility, at least once the real estate market recovers.
  
• A great mid-bridge panorama.
  
• The bridge was renovated & repainted about a decade ago. The company that handled the work has a page describing the project.
  

---

Ok, now with the UV.

Pics: Steel Bridge

View Larger Map

Next up, a few photos of the Steel Bridge, yet another downtown Portland bridge. Most of these photos were taken from the sidewalk on the upper deck of the bridge. Not everyone realizes you can walk across the upper part; the shiny new-ish walkway on the lower deck is wide and convenient, and connects directly with Waterfront Park and the Eastbank Esplanade. The upper deck sidewalks are perfectly fine, but they aren't as convenient, so they don't seem to get a lot of foot traffic. I know I don't go that way very often.



That's kind of a shame really; if you're interested in the bridge at all (which I realize is unlikely), you get a better view of it from above. And if you're interested in the view from the bridge (more likely, although still not super-likely), that's better too. There's even a guardrail between you and the cars on the bridge, which is a nice, and unusual, touch. Still, on the east side you're dumped off into the N-dimensional circus that is the Rose Garden transit center, with streets and MAX lines radiating off in all directions, and then some. And on the west side, well, it's Old Town. Which I'm not afraid of, but a lot of people are, and sometimes I admit they might be on to something.

(Note to this humble blog's surprisingly large (i.e. nonzero) UK readership: "Old Town" in the Portland sense means roughly pre-1900. Seriously. Feel free to giggle if you like.)




A few semi-interesting tidbits about the Steel Bridge:

• It's owned by the Union Pacific railroad, not the city, county, or state. Railroads aren't usually too concerned about aesthetics, which explains a lot about the Steel Bridge. It's a workhorse, not a show horse, as the saying goes. I'm not sure why it's painted black. Maybe they got a good deal on black paint, many years ago. Must've been a one-time deal, if so, since it hasn't been repainted in a very, very long time.
  
• The standard bridge links: Structurae, Bridgehunter and PortlandBridges.
  
• As the Wikipedia article (above) notes, the lower & upper decks raise independently, which is unique in the world, yeehaw. This relates to the next point:
  
• The bridge carries all sorts of traffic. It carries normal road traffic (it was the downtown bridge for US 99, back before I-5 existed), plus MAX trains, heavy rail (including Amtrak service), pedestrians on both the lower & upper decks, and I understand that it even caries a variety of utilities, although I'm not sure which ones. Which leads us to the next point:
  
• Thus, the Steel Bridge is probably a great chokepoint for the Evildoers. (If you're an Evildoer, please stop reading now. Thx. Mgmt.) We probably don't have any Evildoers here, but the security industry insists it's a concern, so we might as well have a cow about it. At least that way we'll get our fair share of that dee-licious Homeland Security pork spending.
  
  Don't believe me? Last October, our fair city played host to something called "TOPOFF4", a Homeland Security shindig that involved a simulated "dirty bomb" attack against the Steel Bridge. (A few stories on that from Indymedia, the Mercury, the Tribune, and OregonLive.) The amusing thing about this is that they actually did the thing up at Portland International Raceway, and just pretended they were at the Steel Bridge. Now, I've been to PIR on numerous occasions, and I can state with authority that there's nothing there that in any way resembles the Steel Bridge. One would think that would be an obstacle, but if you have a Homeland Security-style hyperactive imagination, I suppose anything can stand in for anything else. Invading Iraq can stand in for catching Osama, for example. But I digress. Alternately, well, "TOPOFF" is security-speak for "Top Officials", and this was a bigwig-centric exercise. Which probably meant there was a big freakin' bigwig party at taxpayer expense. Maybe afterwards, but maybe during. Probably everyone got a solid gold "Mission Accomplished" paperweight and a gallon of caviar. That's how these things go, usually. And all those out-of-towners would need to relax after a hard day of manly-man Homeland Security playactin' and simulatin', so naturally there'd be strippers, this being Portland and all. Gotta show the big boys from DC a little local color, right?
  
• A fun twist on the security angle involves the huge grain terminal that sits right next door to the bridge. You know, the one that used to have the ginormous Amazon.com ad on it. As it turns out, the common variety of wheat grown here in the Northwest is ideal for making pitas, naan bread, and other varieties of Evildoing baked goods, so a lot of our exports go to various corners of Evildoerstan. On several occasions I've seen grain ships docked here which had the ship's name in both English and Arabic, and at least one listed its home port as Alexandria, Egypt. Which is just one of those things that happens naturally when you're a major seaport, as we occasionally pretend to be, but I'm sure it's ulcer fodder for the security guys.
  

All that security theater nonsense leads us to today's obligatory "not dying" angle: When crossing the bridge, by whatever means, try to avoid Evildoers. Especially the ones with WMDs. Domestic Evildoers with mysterious but important-sounding government jobs bear watching as well. You may want keep this advice in mind while crossing other bridges too, if I may be so bold. Have I mentioned that I've got more photos on Flickr? Well, I do. FWIW.