Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 161, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 July 1916 — BRIDGE SALT LAKE [ARTICLE]

BRIDGE SALT LAKE

engineers accomplish remarkable FEAT IN WEST. Build Trestle 23 Miles Long, Large Part of Which Has Been Filled In and Made Solid Highway Across the Waters. In the sixties the Union Pacific railroad was built west from Omaha and the Central Pacific (now part of the Southern Pacific) was built, each from San Francisco. When the builders came to the Great Salt Lake basin at Ogden they veered the road to the north and went around the lake to Luclen, a distance of 147 miles. In a third of a century engines grew five times as powerful. Freight trains would carry five times as much weight. Where once one train a day ran each way a dozen now puff around ihe lake, pulled by powerful engines over the mountains 4,900 feet high, down into the valley and up the mountains again and into Luclen, Utah. From Ogden to Luclen, as the crow or, perhaps, the aeroplane flies, the distance was about 103 miles, 30 miles of which was covered by the waters of Great Salt Lake from 1 to 30 feet deep. Weighed against the water was a level roadway 103 miles long, with no mountains to climb. But there washed the salt waters of the great lakes. In 1902 engineers decided on a trestle bridge 23 miles long. Of the 20 miles of trestle 11 in the end were to be filled with earth. So of the miles through wpter nearly 16 miles were to be a solid ridge of earth 16 feet wide at the top and 17 feet above the water. The engineers decided to build a mile and a quarter of trestle a week, over 1,000 feet for each work day.

In June, 1902, trainloads of steel rails reached the lake. In July came the first piles. Many of them were so long that three cars had to be ÜBed to carry them. Three thousand men went to work. At night men worked in the gravel pits by electric light. In the cold of winter and the heat of summer there was no stopping. Sixteen hundred and eighty tons of fresh water were used each day, all of it brought by train —some 80 miles, some 130 miles. Over 38,000 trees were cut down to make piles. On November 13, 1903; the track from the east and the track from the west were joined. The great bridge across the lake is now a solid path, except for 12 miles, which is a trestle. Every 15 feet 5 piles are driven in a row crosswise to the track. They are fastened together on their sides with heavy timbers, four inches and eight inches thick. Across their tofts and joining them together Is a heavy beam 18 feet long and a foot square. Connecting this beam with the next set of piles 15 feet away are 11 heavy timbers laid lengthwise with the track. Above these stringers is a plank floor three inches thick. Above that is a coat of asphalt, then a foot or more of rock ballast on which the track and rails are laid. The floor of the trestle is 16 feet wide. The cut-off from Lucien to Ogden is almost as level as a table. For 36 miles there is no grade. For 30 miles more the grade is so slight that an,average person would need to travel a half mile to rise his own height. Nowhere is the- grade over five inches to the hundred feet. The track is above the water 19 feet. The solid way has cut off one north arm of the lake into which the Bear river flows. This has made that part of the lake so fresh that it has frozen over in winter, though the more salty water on the other side of the track never freezes. Four and a half million dollars has been spent to make this highway.—lndianapolis News.'