It Had to Be Done
The following is an excerpt from “The Technical World Magazine” published in March 1912. The story is a contemporary account of the construction of the Million Dollar Bridge near the Childs Glacier, written by Carlyle Ellis. Railroad enthusiast and collector Shawn Beiswenger sent us copies of the pages quoted here. An original copy is part of his collection, which specializes in Copper River and Northwestern Railway history and memorabilia.
From the pocket diary of E. C. Hawkins, the engineer who built the Copper River and Northwestern Railway in Alaska, under date of May 14, 1910, we read the following entry:
“The falsework under the third span of the bridge was moved out fifteen inches by the ice and had to be put back.”
That was all. Even the italics were not in the original entry.
Now that third span of the Miles Glacier bridge was fifty feet long. The falsework consisted of a thousand or two piles, driven deep into the bottom of the Copper River, forty feet below the surface. The ice was a solid sheet seven feet thick and it was borne on a twelve-knot current. Into it the forest of piles was solidly frozen.
The spring breakup had begun on the river, the ice cap, lifted twenty feet above its winter bed by the flood, was moving. The falsework, carrying a mass of unfinished steel, was fifteen inches out of line and had to be put back.
When the rising water began suddenly to lift the ice and with it the 450 feet of falsework on which the third span was being put together, there was a preliminary emergency of some consequence. It might easily be but an hour or two’s work for the resistless river to wreck the whole span that way. The emergency was met, as scores of others had been before.
The steam from every available engine was driven into small feed pipes and every man in camp was put to work to steam-melt or chop the seven feet of ice clear of the piles. And it was done. The holes were kept open through day and night of bitter cold and the hundreds of cross-pieces unbolted and shifted while the river rose twenty-one feet.
Then began the movement downstream. At first it was but an inch a day; then three or four inches. The melting and chopping went on almost unceasingly. Then the ice made its heaviest charge. A line was taken. The falsework was fifteen inches out and it had to be put back.
Anchorages were hastily built into the ice above the bridge and they were heavy anchorages. Block and tackle was rigged to them and while a gang thawed and chopped at the ice around the piles in the maddest of races the whole 450 feet of towering bridge was dragged inch by inch back into place.
You see, it had to be put back.
The rest was a still more furious race with the ice, for it was moving each day more freely. The last bolt of the span was sent home at midnight after an eighteen hour day of one shift. The great steam traveller was slid to a temporary resting place on the third pier, blocks were knocked out and the third span settled home on its concrete bed.
At one o’clock the whole 450 feet of falsework was a chaotic wreck. The river had won its fight, too late, by less than a single hour.
That hour meant a year saved and that year a fortune.
The complete four pages sent to us are posted below. Thanks again to Shawn Beiswenger for sending us this account of local history.
