St. Johns Bridge Stone Arches

"Mile 04.4 [Westbound from St. Helens Road at NW Wardway and NW Nicolai Road] Highway Fragment: Possibly part of the original highway before the construction of St. Johns Bridge, this 90-foot fragment is visible on the west side of the bridge footing on the south side of Highway 30."

A. F. Litt, August 9, 2022

For about eight years, every time I was cruising out to explore the Lower Highway, I'd be so focused on the day's field work ahead that I'd forget about these arches until I was right on top of them. Then I'd spit out some particularly extra-foul curse words, it already being too late to pull over, glare at stonework as it flashed by, and then continue on with my day, consoling myself with the thought, "Oh well, those are close and easy, I can just run over here any old time..."

Eight years pass. "Any Old Time," as it does way too often, forgets to show its face...

I'll say, though, I have always been intrigued by these arches. Flashing by on the highway, it sure looked like there might be an old, old fragment of the original highway spared a century of improvements to modern US 30 lurking up there; let's say, about 'a 90-foot fragment...' So I was very excited in 2020 when I finally got my hands on Taylor's Road of Difficulties: Building the Lower Columbia River Highway, published in 2008, and it seemed to confirm that there was, indeed, a fragment of the original highway behind this stonework (see above).

Finally, last week, after rerouting our plans from eastern Oregon to the Lower Highway to avoid the 100 degree temperatures out there, Kirk and I sat down to look at the Google Earth map and plan our day, and we both remembered that these arches still needed to be studied in detail.

At last, it is done!

A. F. Litt, August 9, 2022

So, is the ivy concealing a nearly century old fragment of pavement!?!

Honest answer? I still don't know, but I doubt it.

First of all, wading through this knee-deep ivy, navigating blindly over decades and decades of small slides creating extremely uneven ground below, was a total nightmare of unseen, unsteady footing and blind holes waiting to break ankles and legs. It was not a fun walk at all. These slides are more obvious in person than in the image above, the small ridges every few yards or so rippling the green leaves like waves in a slow motion storm... As for pavement under there, who knows? Between the slides and the overgrowth, it would take an afternoon of committed brush clearing and digging to rule it out. And the digging might be more than handheld shovels can manage. While it is still possible that there is a paved road grade hiding somewhere under this mess, I am leaning toward not, because of those slides themselves.

Starting from the south end of the arches, and continuing north, past the impact damage, the arches end before the retaining wall supporting them does (see below). To me, this seems to be a key indicator that the arches were decorative, not ever protecting cars from a nasty fall if they lost the road.

But let's look to the arches at the south end of Bridge Avenue before wrapping this up and drawing some final conclusions!

A. F. Litt, August 9, 2022

Back in 2015, I was all over the south end of Bridge Avenue, sadly, documenting the demolition of the old Gasco Building, just visible on the left side of the photo above, and I did take a ton of photos of these arches, but as long time followers of the project are already tired of hearing, those photos are stuck out of reach on my AWOL hard drives for now.

Bridge Avenue was constructed in 1931, concurrent with the construction of the St. Johns Bridge, to access the new bridge from the west side of the Willamette River. The Columbia River Highway was already several years old through this stretch at the time.

The Gasco Building being in the image above confirms that the current alignment of Bridge Avenue and the historic alignment match. However, looking at the Google Street View image below, it is clear that the arches and retaining wall were lengthened between 1937 and today.

So, what does this tell us about the arches to the north, past the bridge? Well, considering that these two walls are the only ones built in the style of the Gorge highway in this area, the only surviving ones, at least, it strongly suggests that northern arches were built either in 1931 when the southern ones were, or later, when the southern arches and wall were lengthened.

If this is true, then there would be no highway above the northern arches, it was merely built as a decorative retaining wall. The amount of slide material that wall is actually retaining supports this hypothesis, too. However, countering my argument that the end of the arches before the end of the wall could mean that the northern arches were never meant to support a road is spoiled a bit by the fact that, at on the south end, the arches end before the end of the wall, too, but we know very well that there was a road there.

Still, I don't feel like we know enough to confirm this idea. Once again we are left with more research being required.

A. F. Litt, March 23, 2020

There is some old masonry guard wall on the west side of the highway under the bridge that needs further research and exploration. I can't pull it up on Google Earth right now, but I may have some photos of my own I can track down later.

It could be that this is the 90-foot fragment Taylor is referring to, and that makes sense considering that the frontage roads on the east side of the highway are much longer than 90 feet!

If this is the case, then the frontage roads below are probably just that, frontage roads, and are not surviving relics of the original alignment. It will be easy enough to sort all of this out when the quarantines are over and I return to Portland.

A. F. Litt, August 9, 2022

For years, I've been looking at a lot of these old frontage roads between Portland's St. Helens Road and St. Helens itself, between the river and the current highway, like the NW Knappton-General Road shown in orange above, and wondering if they might actually be the original Columbia River Highway before all of the improvement and widening projects over the years, which are known to have included some confirmed realignments, too.

A lot of these look like very old roads and match many of the characteristics of the original CRH, but as I've learned more over the last couple years, I now believe that many of these frontages between the highway and the river, while actually being remnants of an old road, are actually the remains of one much older than the CRH. I now think that these are likely remnants of the Old Portland Road between St. Helens and Portland.

This makes sense, with the new highway being cut into the hillside above the old, existing road while traffic continued unimpeded through the construction of the new CRH. Then, after the new highway was completed, over the many decades since, the old road was chopped up into the fragments that remain to this day.

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