The Albany railroad bridge on the Willamette River rests on five concrete piers that look solid for their age.
In case you were wondering about this, as unlikely as that is, the piers of the Albany railroad bridge on the Willamette River are even older than the bridge itself, but only by one year.
In a story about the bridge on May 16, the latest of many, I had wondered about the age of the concrete structures on which the steel trusses of the bridge rest. Were they built the same year as the bridge, which was 1921?
Bob Melbo came up with the answer. He’s a former Oregon superintendent of the Southern Pacific, then ran the Willamette & Pacific Railroad for a while in the 199os, and still works as the rail planner for the Oregon Department of Transportation. If it’s Oregon railroad history you want to know about, Bob is the guy to ask.
The Willamette River Crossing is at milepost 691.82 of the old Southern Pacific system. In 1910, the original wooden bridge built by the Oregon Pacific Railroad was replaced with another wooden “draw span,” with two spans on each side of the swing span in the middle. And then, in 1921, the Southern Pacific replaced those wooden structures with steel.
Melbo at first thought the piers might have been built for the wooden swing bridge in 1910. But then he emailed this: “UPDATE: The concrete piers were poured in 1920, which is consistent with 1921 construction of the current steel bridge. It takes awhile to build something that large and long.”
In August 1921, the wooden bridge was still in place. A headline in the Aug. 11 edition of the Albany Evening Herald said, “Will tear down famous bridge; want steel one.”
“Albany is soon to lose a famous landmark,” the paper said. “The Southern Pacific bridge across the Willamette river, famous for being the longest wooden span in the world, is being torn out, and a new steel drawbridge built.”
The gist of the story was that Albany Mayor P.A. Young had been informed by the “war department” in Portland (I guess that was a predecessor of the Army Corps of Engineers’ Portland office) that Southern Pacific had applied for a permit to replace the wooden bridge. The federal agency would receive “protests from the standpoint of navigation” until Aug. 17.
The story quoted Mayor Young to the effect that “the city has no objection to the new steel bridge.”
And then the story ended with the clincher as far as my question about the piers was concerned: “The piers were built and other preliminary work was done last summer.”
It did not take the SP long to get its permit and complete the bridge replacement. Here’s another story from the Albany Evening Herald, this one published on Friday, Oct. 7, 1921:
They tore out one bridge and replaced it with a new one in two or three months — and all without disrupting train service across the river. That’squite a feat those builders accomplished, more than a century ago. (hh)
Thanks for the history lesson Hasso. I’ve got another one for you. Further upstream near the mouth of the Callipooia are two other piers that carry power transmission wires. Who and when were they built. For some reason I thought that they also had originally been part of a railroad bridge.
Those piers carried a road bridge that was replaced by the Ellsworth Street Bridge in 1925.
Thanks Hasso.
That bridge was built in 1892. It was fine for horse and buggy traffic, but too narrow for automobiles and trucks to pass each other on the bridge. Now its old piers carry those power lines.
Excellent information! Thank you!!
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The current bridge supports have been blocked by very large trees. How much load can they endure before collapse! ?