SEQUIM — The Olympic Discovery Trail across Railroad Bridge is expected to reopen to pedestrians and bicyclists Saturday afternoon, said Powell Jones, director of the Dungeness River Audubon Center.
Jones said he didn’t yet know what time the bridge would open.
The bridge was closed Feb. 15 for volunteers and contractors to complete work on the cement deck of the new west trestle.
New deck surface
They replaced the slick wooden decking and aging wood on the railings of the 101-year-old bridge with cement.
Volunteers from the Peninsula Trails Coalition will continue working on final details on the bridge for the next week and might close the bridge again as needed, Jones said.
“It’s right on schedule,” he said.
The cement work includes a non-slip brushed cement surface and decorative panels featuring Northwest Native American artwork, as well as a compass rose in the center of the west trestle observation platform.
Jones said getting the cement work done on time was a challenge.
“We had such an awful stretch of weather [when the work was scheduled],” he said.
The volunteer crew from the Peninsula Trails Coalition kept working though the weather.
“The job the volunteers did was fabulous,” Jones said.
The new west trestle of Railroad Bridge was dedicated in December with a ceremony including cedar boughs, blessings and speeches praising the improvements made at the Dungeness River crossing.
New trestle
The bridge — and the trail — had been closed for 10 months while the 570-foot wooden trestle, which had been damaged in a storm and river flood in February 2015, was replaced with a steel 750-foot trestle.
However, the weather was too wet and too cold to finish the deck at that time, and the work was scheduled for February and March.
The Jamestown S’Klallam tribe has owned the bridge and the adjacent Railroad Bridge Park at 2151 W. Hendrickson Road since 1991.
About half of the trestle bridge passes over the cobbled riverbed, including the new main channel where the river settled after a February 2015 flood that rerouted the river.
The other half of the trestle passes over wooded floodplain covered with ferns, trees and berry bushes.
Since the tribe took over the bridge and surrounding lands, it has received more than $2.7 million in seven grants from five sources to restore and improve the area.
The tribe also received a $100,000 grant from First Federal to replace the bridge’s wooden decking with cement to match the surface of the new trestle.
The replacement trestle allows logs and migrating salmon to pass beneath without hindrance by reducing the number of support beams needed to prop up the walkway, the tribe has said.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56250, or at arice@peninsuladailynews.com.
