Riparia Bridge

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Coordinates: 46 ° 34 ′ 31 ″  N , 118 ° 5 ′ 24 ″  W.

Riparia Bridge
Riparia Bridge
The Riparia Bridge 1898 (demolished 1969)
use Railway bridge
Crossing of Snake River
place Whitman Counties and Columbia Counties in Washington
construction Truss bridge with swing bridge
overall length 305 m
Longest span 99 m
opening 1889
planner George S. Morison
closure 1969 (demolished)
location
Riparia Bridge (USA)
Riparia Bridge

The Riparia Bridge was a single-track railway bridge over the Snake River between Whitman County and Columbia Counties in southeast Washington state . The truss bridge designed by George S. Morison was one of the first steel bridges in the United States. It was built by the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company (OR&N) until 1889 , which later became part of the Union Pacific Railroad . It was named after the Riparia settlement on the banks of the river , which was located on the lower reaches of the Snake in front of a series of rapids and formed the western end of the unhindered navigable section on which traffic was possible up to Lewiston in the east, about 100 kilometers away . Due to its strategic location, Riparia developed into an important regional transshipment point between shipping and rail traffic at the end of the 19th century. As a result of the construction of an additional route to the north of the Palouse over the Joso Bridge in the 1910s and the decline in shipping on the Snake, traffic shifted and the bridge and the town of the same name lost their importance. With the construction of the Lower Monumental run- of -river power station at the end of the 1960s, the section was dammed from 1969 to Lake Herbert G. West ; the bridge and the abandoned town were demolished and later partially flooded.

history

First transport routes along the Columbia from 1850

The first transportation routes in Washington and Oregon ran along the Columbia and its tributaries in the mid-19th century . By the end of the century, rail connections were built along the riverbanks and from Kalama as well as over the cascade range to Puget Sound (some of the rapids, some of which were impassable at the time ).Arrows 12x12 w.vg

In the middle of the 19th century, the first transportation routes in what is now Washington State ran along the Columbia River . However, a large number of rapids prevented continuous traffic, as some of them were only navigable downstream and when the water level was sufficient. The first railroad lines were built to bypass the Cascades Rapids ( Cascades Railroad 1863) and between The Dalles and the Celilo Falls ( Oregon Portage Railroad 1862). In addition, a connection between Wallula and Walla Walla was built with the Walla Walla & Columbia River Railroad until 1877 . All steamships and railways on Columbia were part of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company until 1880 , which operated shipping routes from Portland to Lewiston on the Snake River , which was only navigable eastwards from Riparia . The German emigrant Henry Villard acquired the Oregon Steam Navigation Company in 1880 and combined it with the Oregon Steamship Company's shipping routes from Portland to San Francisco and other companies to form the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company (OR&N). In the following years he pushed the expansion of the railway network along the south bank of the Columbia and created a continuous connection from Portland to the Snake River. Villard wanted to benefit from the construction of the first northern transcontinental railroad connection from Duluth on Lake Superior to Puget Sound by the Northern Pacific Railway (NP) with OR&N and to maintain its monopoly in the transport industry in the Pacific Northwest . To this end, in 1881, with the help of European investors, he organized the takeover of the NP, whose line , coming from Spokane in Wallula, was connected to the OR&N in 1883 and ran from Portland via Kalama to Puget Sound.

alternative description
Riparia ↓
OR&N
NP
GN
SP
UP
OR&N route network from 1906

At the confluence of the Snake in the Columbia, the first bridge had to be built over the lower reaches of the Snake through the NP on the way to Wallula, but this could only be completed after the opening of the transcontinental connection in 1884; in the meantime the river crossing has been realized by a train ferry . At this point Villard had lost control of his companies and the Union Pacific Railroad (UP) subsequently gained control of the OR&N. The NP was forced to build its own route over the Stampede Pass of the Cascade Range to Tacoma , which was completed in 1888; the Great Northern Railway (GN) followed in 1893 with a connection over the Stevens Pass to Seattle . At the end of the 1880s, OR&N expanded its routes north of the Snake River to Spokane and in 1888 hired the bridge engineer George S. Morison to build his own bridge over the Snake in Riparia and in Portland over the Willamette River . Morison had already built the Bismarck Bridge in North Dakota over the Missouri River in 1882 for the transcontinental connection of the NP and was in charge of the introduction of steel into bridge construction in North America. The two steel bridges he designed were the first of their kind in the Pacific Northwest. The bridge in Portland was given the name Steel Bridge (1889) by the population . In order to continue to guarantee ship traffic, both truss bridges had a swing bridge . A design that was new to Morison, which he used for the first time and which later became his preferred variant for movable bridge types.

Riparia 1860 to 1970

The fertile hilly landscape of the Palouse was settled by the first farmers from the 1860s and is now one of the most important wheat-growing areas in the USA

With the settlement of the fertile hilly landscape of the Palouse , beginning with the region south of the Snake in Walla Walla County and later north of the Snake to over the Palouse River towards Spokane, one of the most important wheat-growing areas in the USA emerged. In the 1860s, one of several ferry connections across the Snake to the northern Palouse Hills was established at the mouth of Alkali Flat Creek . In the following years the settlement Texas City , also called Texas Ferry and in the 20th century mainly called Riparia , developed here on the south bank and later on the north bank . Located directly above the Texas Rapids , which formed the end of the unhindered shipping area from Lewiston to Columbia and, like the following rapids, were only passable at certain times of the year, Riparia became a stopping point for the steamships of the OR&N. With the expansion of the railway network in the 1880s, from Walla Walla to the south bank of the Snake and later from the north bank towards Spokane , Riparia developed into an important regional transshipment point between ship and rail traffic. The ship connections to Portland were discontinued over time, but those to the east in the direction of Idaho were strengthened, since a railway connection to Lewiston was not established until 1908 with the Camas Prairie Railroad (CSP). The construction of the Riparia Bridge between 1888 and 1889 - the first train passed the bridge in April 1889 - created the second bridge over the lower reaches of the Snake, which further promoted the development of Riparia. With a population of around 100, there were always several hundred passers-by, farmers and traders in Riparia who got on or off the steamships or trains or switched between them.

The Lower Monumental power plant commissioned in 1969

With the construction of the CSP along the northern bank of the Snake in the early 20th century, the decline of Riparia began. With the further expansion of the railroad and road network, the changes here became unnecessary and steam navigation to Lewiston was completely discontinued until 1940. The UP had been the majority owner of OR&N since the end of the 1890s and reorganized it in 1910 as a subsidiary under the name Oregon-Washington Railroad and Navigation Company (O-WR & N). In response to the laying of a railway line on the north bank of the Columbia to Spokane by the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway (a joint venture of the NP and GN), the O-WR & N built a new, more direct line with a lower incline from Spokane to from the 1910s to connect to the old route opposite the confluence of the Palouse and the Snake (Ayer Junction) . Here the Joso Bridge was built about 15 km downstream from the old Riparia Bridge , which led the Spokane-Ayer Cut-Off, opened in 1914, over the river canyon at a height of almost 80 meters. The Great Depression of the 1930s accelerated the decline of Riparia, which was increasingly abandoned and finally abandoned entirely. In the course of the New Deal , the construction of barrages for energy supply along the Columbia and its tributaries began, which in the late 1960s also led to the construction of the Lower Monumental run- of -river power station , about 40 km downstream from Riparia. Before the start of operation and the damming of the section of the river to Lake Herbert G. West , the Riparia Bridge and the abandoned village were demolished in 1969 , which has since been largely below the water level of the barrage.

The O-WR & N finally became completely part of the Union Pacific in 1936 , whose main route between Hinkle in Oregon and Spokane now runs over the Joso Bridge , which rises only about 60 meters above the reservoir. There is also a branch line from the Ayer Junction along the south bank to the east, which crosses the Snake about eight kilometers downstream from Riparia via a former bridge of the CSP, which was replaced by a new building in 1971, and connection to the network at the level of the former village the Great Northwest Railroad (successor to the CSP).

description

Illustration of the Riparia Bridge in Scientific American from 1891 (looking north, swing bridge closed)

The steel bridge was divided into three trusses , one of which was designed as a swing bridge . The two immovable girders (only compensation for temperature- related changes in length was possible using floating bearings ) on the north side were 99 m long, 12.2 m high and 5.5 m wide (each related to the central axes of the belts ). For this, Morison chose parallel - belt Whipple trusses with an underlying track (English whipple truss , after the inventor Squire Whipple , 1804–1888), which he had already used for the Bismarck Bridge (1882) or Omaha Bridge (1887), for example . The latter already had a steel content of around 40%, but it wasn't until the Nebraska City Bridge of 1888 that Morison made the complete transition to the new building material. In order to ensure the quality of the steel, Morison requested regular samples of the material, the tensile and flexural strength of which were only allowed to move within certain limits.

Illustration of the Riparia Bridge in Scientific American from 1891 (looking north, swing bridge open)

The swing bridge had a girder 107 m in length, which was designed as a frame framework with partly crossed cross struts and a top chord inclined towards the ends. The rotating mechanism was a special feature of the swing bridge. For the rotation, the carrier was lifted by means of a central hydraulic cylinder, on which the carrier could then rotate with a fluid bearing. The rotation was guided by eight circularly arranged rollers on the substructure; the supports on the lower chords (in the middle and at the ends) only took over the dead load and payload when they were closed and lowered. Since the river valley in Riparia opened wide and did not have any steep slopes, the abutments could pass directly into the adjacent track systems or railway embankments, the total length of the bridge was about 305 m. The steel construction rested on three river pillars made of basalt stones and the two abutments. The river pillars were anchored in the ground using caissons and the abutments using pile foundations . The round pillar of the swing bridge had a wooden walkway on both sides in the direction of the river, which served as protection of the pillar from ice drift and the opened truss from ship collisions.

See also

literature

  • Riparia Bridge, Snake River. In: Scientific American. Supplement. Vol. 32, No. 833, 1891, pp. 13303 f.
  • George S. Morison: Bridge over the Snake River at Riparia, Washington, US In: Engineering. Vol. 52, November 6, 1891, pp. 526-534.

Web links

Commons : Riparia Bridge  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ United States. Army. Corps of Engineers: Report of the Chief of Engineers US Army. Part 2, US Government Printing Office, 1877, p. 1041 ( digitized version )
  2. ↑ a b United States. War Department: Annual Reports of the War Department. Vol. 2, Part 3, US Government Printing Office, 1880, p. 2291 ( digitized version )
  3. ^ PW Gilette: A Brief History of Oregon Steam Navigation Company. In: Oregon Historical Quarterly. Vol. 5, No. 1, 1904, pp. 120-132.
  4. ^ CJ Smith: Early Development of Railroads in the Pacific Northwest. In: The Washington Historical Quarterly. Vol. 13, No. 4, 1922, pp. 243-250.
  5. ^ BNSF - Snake River Bridge. BridgeHunter.com; accessed on October 7, 2019.
  6. ^ Susan Davis Faulkner: Early Pasco. Arcadia Publishing, 2009, ISBN 978-0-7385-7103-4 , pp. 7-20.
  7. ^ A b c Clayton B. Fraser: Nebraska City Bridge. Historic American Engineering Record, HAER No. NE-2, Denver, Colorado 1986, pp. 270-272.
  8. ^ A b Ruth Kirk, Carmela Alexander: Exploring Washington's Past. University of Washington Press, 2001, ISBN 978-0-295-97443-9 , pp. 212 f.
  9. ^ A b Caroline D. Carley, Robert Lee Sappington: Archaeological Test Excavations of the Historic Component of 45-WT-1 Texas City / Riparia, Whitman County, Washington, 1983. Anthropological Research Manuscript Series, No. 77, University of Idaho, Moscow 1984, pp. 1-10 ( digitized version ).
  10. ↑ Harriman Lines Spokane-Ayer Cut-Off. In: Railway Age Gazette. Vol. 52, No. 22, 1912, pp. 1187-1192.
  11. ^ Notable Structures On The Spokane-Ayer Cut-off. In: Railway Age Gazette. Vol. 58, No. 12, 1915, pp. 623-626.
  12. ^ Keith C. Petersen, Mary E. Reed: Controversy, Conflict and Compromise: A History of the Lower Snake River Development. Walla Walla District, US Army Corps of Engineers, 1994, pp. 55-57.
  13. ^ UP - Snake River Bridge. BridgeHunter.com; accessed on October 7, 2019.
  14. ^ Cambridge Systematics, HDR: Statewide Rail Capacity and System Needs StudyTask 1.1.A - Washington State's Freight Rail System. Washington State Transportation Commission, May 2006, pp. 19-22, et al. 54; accessed on October 7, 2019.
  15. ↑ a b Riparia Bridge, Snake River. In: Scientific American. Supplement. Vol. 32, No. 833, 1891, pp. 13303 f.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on October 21, 2019 .