Bridal Veil Bridge & Highway
Route 2
Built: 1914
Robert W. Hadlow, Columbia River Highway Historic District, National Historic Landmark Nomination
CS10. Structure: Bridal Veil Falls Bridge, No. 823 HAER No. OR-36-E
Location: HMP 28.4
Date: 1914
Designer: K. P. Billner, Oregon State Highway Dept.
Builder: Pacific Bridge Company, Portland
Owner: Oregon Department of Transportation
This bridge is a skewed 100-foot reinforced-concrete deck girder span in which the solid railings serve as continuous beams. The transverse deck support members function as deck girders.
Width out-to-out is 23'-2", curb-to-curb is 21 feet. The unique design allowed the bridge to span both the falls and a nearby lumber company’s log flumes.
Hadlow, Landmark Nomination, 19
On November 11, 2014, I posted this on the Facebook Page:
"So, a question for everyone... Why choose to build the highway over the top of Bridal Veil Falls rather than lower, where you can actually see the darned thing?"
Lancaster's quote discredits the idea that there wasn't much, or any, waterfall there when the highway was built, so no one was really missing much of anything.
The Bridal Veil flume was a big one, in full operation in 1914, and there may not have been much water left in the creek.
Formerly Bridal Veil Falls was noted for its beauty but the waters now are confined in a lumber-flume.
Oregon State Archives - A 1940 Journey Across Oregon:http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/pages/exhibits/across/eaglecr.html
The flume reduced the flow of the falls, but it did not eliminate it. (Also, I learned that the Oregon Archives merely paraphrased from the WPA book, but did not quote it exactly, leading to some inaccuracies in their online "exhibit", at least in this case."
Peg Willis commented:
According to what I've read, the flume was the problem. If they had located the highway to get a decent view of the falls, the flume would have hung too low overhead and trucks would have demolished it. The Palmer Lumber Company (up the hill from B.V.) was a force to be reckoned with.
Tom Kloster commented:
Here's a related question that might have the same answer: why build a solid railing that you can't even see through on this bridge… and no sidewalk (ala the nearby bridges at Latourell and Shepperd's Dell)? Maybe it was so industrial down below that Sam Lancaster decided a concrete wall would look better, and that nobody would really want to stop and walk about..?
Samuel C. Lancaster, The Columbia River Highway In Multnomah County
Passing on from Shepperd's Dell to the east, we find the next controlling point to be at Bridal Veil Falls, distant 1.02 miles.
The large lumber yards of a mill occupy all the available space between the railroad tracks and the waterfalls, therefore we had to cross the stream just above the falls, at an elevation of 210 feet. This bridge is a skew girder 110 feet in length, and while not unsightly is yet serviceable and does the particular thing for which it was designed.
Going east from Bridal Veil the road is located so as to give a fine view of these falls, as you stand looking down on them.
Lancaster, 1914 62
