SEQUIM — It took a good 250 hours of unpaid labor, donated materials and machinery, but the path was made straight up over the Dungeness River.
On Monday, people were strolling, pedaling bikes and running across a wide, sun-lit cedar ramp connected to the restored Railroad Bridge, as if it had always been there — but it was brand-new, opened on Saturday, the handiwork of Peninsula Trails Coalition volunteers like Scott Bradley, LaVonne Mueller, Paul Hansen and Dave LeRoux.
“This guy is an artist,” LeRoux said of Bradley, who fashioned a kind of concrete doorstep for the ramp and bridge spanning the Dungeness River at Railroad Bridge Park, 2151 W. Hendrickson Road, just northwest of Sequim.
The new ramp runs alongside a narrow, switch-backing one put in 20 years ago when Railroad Bridge was restored by the same bunch: LeRoux and the volunteer crew, the visionaries behind the Olympic Discovery Trail.
The trail, designed for bicycling, walking, running and horseback riding, is a public path with legs in Port Townsend, Blyn, Sequim, Port Angeles, along Lake Crescent and points west.
The long-range plan is to connect all sections, to make an uninterrupted route from the Port Townsend waterfront all the way to the Pacific Ocean at LaPush.
Railroad Bridge is one among a collection of scenic train trestles along the Discovery Trail.
It was restored back in 1990, when the Trust for Public Lands owned the land around the river; the place hadn’t yet been dedicated as a public park.
LeRoux and the other builders were given a 3,000-foot-long, 100-foot-wide right of way to build the bridge, so they had to squeeze, and one might say contort, the wheelchair- and bicycle-accessible ramp into that space.
The Railroad Bridge Park stretch of the Olympic Discovery Trail, with its river- and birdsong, towering trees and trestle through it all, attracts flocks of people.
A counter installed in summer 2008 recorded 119,660 crossings over Railroad Bridge.
And in the first three months of 2010, 24,827 crossed — roughly the population of Port Angeles plus Sequim — while the average count last month was 285 per day.
But because of its hairpin turns, cyclists with trailers, tandem-bike riders and people on the increasingly popular recumbent bikes usually couldn’t use the ramp, unless they wanted to hoist their vehicles over their heads and carry them up onto Railroad Bridge.
A winding tale
The story of Railroad Bridge Park itself is a winding one, as LeRoux tells it.
The Trust for Public Lands bought the land a couple of decades ago for $25,000 in order to protect it from development; the state Department of Fish and Wildlife acquired it soon after and dedicated the park in 1992.
Today, the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe and the River Center Foundation are the caretakers of the land and the nearby Dungeness River Audubon Center.
With the tribe supportive of such improvements to the park, LeRoux set about assembling work parties to build a better ramp.
Starting on a rainy morning earlier this month, crews of six to 11 unpaid workers laid footings, posts and decking, and finally opened the new platform to traffic at 5 p.m. Saturday.
This newest piece of bridge happened thanks to several local businessmen who, in at least one case, decided on the spur of the moment to charge nothing.
The concrete, LeRoux said, came from Sequim Redi-Mix.
“I wasn’t planning on getting it donated. But the owner, [John Duquette], found out it was a volunteer project and said, ‘I’m donating it all.’
“That’s what’s great about these kinds of projects,” added LeRoux. “People want to contribute something.”
Jay Ketchum of Affordable Crane donated crane time for lowering beams into place, and Quadra Engineering of Sequim provided design work at no charge, he added.
Next on the list of projects at Railroad Bridge Park: a “little zigzag trail,” to the new ramp, said Bob Boekelheide, director of the River Center.
He added that there will be some planting alongside the ramp, to help redirect people to its entrance. Boekelheide hopes to have the work finished this month.
For information about Peninsula Trails Coalition work parties elsewhere in Clallam County, phone LeRoux at 360-775-7364.
To learn more about Railroad Bridge Park and the Dungeness River Audubon Center, phone 360-681-4076 or visit www.DungenessRiverCenter.org.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.