Tag Archives: Union Pacific

PILLARS OF HERCULES – NEW WORLD TWIST ON AN OLD CLASSIC

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Pillars of Hercules rise to the right of Cigar Rock.

Flying along Interstate 84, you might catch an ephemeral glance at a waterfall or two. If you know when to look.  Traffic speeds along well above the speed limit of 65 mph. The number of cars and trucks seem to exponentially increase with the years.  Pity the traveler who finds themselves stuck behind one of the giant propellors heading to the wind farms just south of the east end of the Columbia River Gorge. Road travel has come a long way since the first road was put in over 150 years ago. Basalt columns occur in many areas along the way. So, the columns and cliffs jutting up to the south of the freeway just west of the Bridal Veil exit – exit 44 – might not garner an extra glance from a speeding car.  You have just missed noting the Pillars of Hercules.

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DESCHUTES RAILROADS FEUD DEEP IN THE CANYONS

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On the old railbed of the Des Chutes Railroad with the river below.

Type in a query for ‘railroad wars’ and you will find three events under the Wikipedia entry for “railroad wars”.  The last event was the “Deschutes Railroad War”.  Of the three, this is the shortest entry.  The entry focuses on the actual building difficulties of the two Deschutes railroads erected on either side of the river.   But to really understand the real reason for the enmity between the competing rail companies, we need to go further back before the 1912 construction of the two lines.

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RAIL STATIONS OF THE NORTHWEST – MULTIPLE STATIONS BETTER THAN ONE?

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Union Station in Seattle – originally the Oregon & Washington Railroad Depot.

As rail travel in the western US continues to be a fade from the past, many people have forgotten several cities used to have more than one passenger terminal to use.  Some of the multiple rail stations have survived in other guises.  Some, simply gone.

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PORTLAND RAIL BRIDGES – CONNECTING THE ROSE CITY TO THE WORLD

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Steel Bridge carries trains and pedestrians on the lower deck; light rail and auto traffic use the upper deck.

There are many articles – blog posts or otherwise – and even books about the bridges of Portland, Oregon.  Of the twelve bridges along the Willamette River – four more on the Columbia – little space usually covers the Burlington Northern Railroad Bridge 5.1 or the rail portion of the Steel Bridge.  If you exclude the new Tilikum Crossing Bridge, which carries light rail tracks and buses, the other rail bridges lack the grace of the St Johns or Fremont Bridges and the traffic of all of the other bridges – maybe the Steel excluded.

A recent post about the rail ferry at Kalama, Washington, some forty-five minutes north of the city, got me thinking about railroads and history.  While at first glance, both are reasonably complicated, in the case of the main rail bridges in Portland, like the ferry at Kalama, it all comes down to James J. Hill.

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