SEQUIM — A little more than a week after closure of the flood-damaged trestle, plans are underway to open a kind of viewing deck on Railroad Bridge.
On Feb. 6, heavy rain and a rushing Dungeness River pulled away pilings and a truss section of the iconic bridge’s western trestle, prompting the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office to close the entire span.
“The decking was just hanging there,” said Powell Jones, director of the adjacent Dungeness River Audubon Center.
The Jamestown S’Klallam tribe owns Railroad Bridge Park, the property surrounding the bridge at 2151 W. Hendrickson Road, and sent in Jamestown Excavating to stabilize the trestle with cables.
“No more has fallen in [to the river]; all of the parts we were worried about have been secured,” said Jones.
Until the closure, Railroad Bridge was a well-traveled passage of the Olympic Discovery Trail, the car-free pathway that runs through parts of Jefferson and Clallam counties.
The main Railroad Bridge, at 150 feet in length, is undamaged; it’s the trestle — the west-side walkway onto the bridge — that’s broken apart.
Yet while that will be closed for months, “we want to open the bridge,” Jones said, “so people can come up onto it,” possibly by the end of this week.
“It’s everyone’s trail,” he said.
Visitors still will not be able to cross the bridge, since the trestle will stay closed.
Meanwhile, Jamestown S’Klallam environmental planning manager Hansi Hals reported that, in the wake of this winter’s storms, the Dungeness River has moved over.
“The main channel is now west of where it had been,” Hals said.
“This stretches back to the December time frame,” when a few alder trees came down.
Then, in the first week of February, the rain felled more trees: alders and a massive cottonwood. This pulled away the bank, making way for the wild Dungeness to change course.
It was the power of the river, which flows steeply down from the Olympic Mountains, that undermined the trestle — “hydraulics,” Hals said.
The main Railroad Bridge pilings are driven far down into concrete in the river substrate, she added, but the trestle’s supports weren’t so deep.
The challenge now, added Jones, is to rebuild the trestle in a way that preserves the Dungeness’ natural flow.
“It calls for a new design. We’re trying to figure out what’s possible — for funding and to free the river,” he said.
Hals said that it will take months to fund the redesign and repair, and that it’s uncertain whether the bridge will reopen in time for the June 7 North Olympic Discovery Marathon, run on the Discovery Trail from Sequim to Port Angeles.
For cyclists riding the trail now, Clallam County Road Department Engineer Ross Tyler recommends using U.S. Highway 101 as a detour, joining it from Carlsborg Road on the west side of the Dungeness River and River Road on the east side.
For equestrians, a detour to Old Olympic Highway’s bridge over the Dungeness is a better choice, Tyler said.
Come rain or come shine, Railroad Bridge is one of the most popular stretches of the Discovery Trail. According to the Dungeness River Audubon Center’s electronic counter, last month saw 9,783 crossings by pedestrians, cyclists and equestrians.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
