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State Trail: Shellrock Crossingv.2020.05.16.007Google Earth Imagery Date: September 3, 2018
Eva Emery Dye, Morning Oregonian: Building of Columbia River Highway Greatest Achievement of Kind in Western Hemisphere (1916)
Eva Emery Dye, Morning Oregonian: Building of Columbia River Highway Greatest Achievement of Kind in Western Hemisphere (1916)
“But you can never build a road around Shell Rock Mountain!”, old-timers jeered when “the godfather of good roads” talked of a Columbia River Highway, “It can’t be did!”
Simon Benson took a look at Shell Rock Mountain, a shaly [sic], shifting, disintegrating point of rock. Had he not seen roads in Norway, the home of good roads? Simon Benson handed Governor Oswald West $10,000 to establish a convict camp of “honor men” to build a solid road around Shell Rock. By Spring it was done. But with the first jar, down fell the walls on the railroad track below.
“Here! here!” cried the O.W.R. & N. officials. “This will never do! No road can be built above us! All your money is wasted.”
“No,” Simon Benson decided, “the money is not wasted. It has served a good purpose. It shows we must have intelligent engineering skill.”
Dye, Eva Emery. "Building of Columbia River Highway Greatest Achievement of Kind in Western Hemisphere." Morning Oregonian. January 1, 1916. Qtd. in ODOT: 2009 Plan - Segment 3 - Shellrock Mountain Crossing
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