Monday, March 18, 2019

the Duhamel Trestle Bridge, Alberta, Canada


This was on the Grand Trunk Pacific's Calgary--Edmonton Line and was the world's longest wooden bridge while it stood. It was completed in 1910 and dismantled in 1924.

Almost 4,000 feet (1.2 km) long and 120 feet (37 metres) high, it arced in a great sweep from river bank to river bank. At times, 120 men were working on it. Others, some of them farmers using their horses and wagons, hauled the raw timbers from where the railway deposited them in Camrose to the bridge site to be cut to size. Still others hauled the cut timbers out into the valley to the construction site.

The bridge fell victim to railway consolidation and the great structure was dismantled, its huge timbers salvaged for building and repairing other bridges. The river valley near Duhamel again stood quiet.

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