Wooden Wonder

As rail building crews reached the Gilahina River, they were racing to complete the Copper River and Northwestern Railway by April 1911 because copper prices were high and pressure was on to get ore to market. Seasoned crews worked around the clock through one of the harshest winters on record, building the thirteen miles of track between the Kuskulana Bridge and the Gilahina River in just seventeen days. Wooden trestles were common along the railway to negotiate the rugged Alaskan landscape, and 273 of them were built spanning over thirty miles. The Gilahina Trestle was the largest, standing 90 feet tall and 880 feet long and requiring over one half million board feet of lumber. In January 1911, with temperatures falling to -67 degrees Fahrenheit, workers faced bitter cold that split and cracked timbers, and because the ground was frozen, holes had to be blasted to anchor the pilings. Despite these conditions, skilled workers completed the trestle in just eight days, and on January 28, 1911, the first train crossed carrying construction supplies. Sparks from passing trains later posed a serious danger to the wooden trestles, and in the summer of 1915 a fire burned the Gilahina Trestle to the ground, but rail crews rebuilt it in only ten days to keep ore trains running.

Chitina, Alaska · United States