SEQUIM — Crossing over the recently reopened Railroad Bridge for the first time in 10 months was a great pleasure for Bob Anundson.
The bridge had been closed to the public since February when the western trestle was damaged during a flood of the Dungeness River.
That also closed a portion of the Olympic Discovery Trail. Until the closure, Railroad Bridge was a well-traveled passage of the trail, a hiking-cycling-equestrian path that runs through parts of Jefferson and Clallam counties.
The Jamestown S’Klallam tribe, which owns the bridge and adjacent Railroad Bridge Park at 2151 W. Hendrickson Road, has replaced a 570-foot-long wooden trestle with a 750-foot concrete trestle.
A grand opening ceremony to commemorate the near completion of the $1.53 million construction project is tentatively scheduled for 1 p.m. Wednesday.
Open for use
The bridge was reopened for public use on Thursday.
“We can’t be more delighted,” Anundson said Thursday. “We love that bridge.”
Anundson and his friend Garland Frankfurth were among the first to cross the bridge when it opened, and probably the first to do so on bicycle, he said.
Nordland Construction of Port Townsend was contracted by the tribe to complete the project using design and engineering schematics by Otak of Portland, Ore.
Anundson, 73, of Sequim, has been riding across the bridge with his bicycle club, the Easy Riders, for the last six years.
“We used to meet Monday and Friday on the bridge and go out to the Agnew Grocery Store,” he said.
Other routes
That changed when the flood knocked out a portion of the wooden trestle connecting the bridge with the western river bank.
Anundson and his fellow riders, about 10 in total, were forced to find another route.
“We didn’t have a lot of choices to go west,” he said.
“We had to switch and [ride] over near IHOP and go on 101 and out near Sunny Farms. We took the first right exit once we crossed the bridge.”
His group also had the option of using the Old Olympic Highway bridge to the north, he said.
Anundson’s first crossing wasn’t without incident.
Tree across trestle
“The most interesting thing that happened was just prior to me getting there” at about 9 a.m., “a tree fell across the trestle.”
It fell right across an observation area and it was blocking the entire thing,” Anundson said.
Anundson, Frankfurth and other passersby removed the fallen tree from the trestle, he said.
“A stranger initiated it and Garland and I helped him,” Anundson said.
“It was a pretty good sized [tree]. We got it off and [cut] the branches so you could get past it. It was just by a quirk that actually happened.”
Fortunately, “the tree did the minimum amount of damage under the circumstances,” he said.
Finishing touches
Construction crews are putting the finishing touches on the new trestle, and some work will continue into January, Annette Nesse, Jamestown S’Klallam chief operations officer, has said.
Left to be finished is the observation area where the tree fell.
The construction crew is awaiting the arrival of steel handrails, with wooden rails temporarily in place.
The tribe also has received an additional $100,000 grant from First Federal to replace the wooden decking on the existing Howe Truss bridge to match the decking on the new trestle, Nesse has said.
The new decking will be a great upgrade, Anundson said.
The old decking, when wet “is extremely slippery, and lots of people have fallen on that bridge — both on bicycles and pedestrians,” he said.
“That concrete is going to make a huge difference in safety.”
Construction phases
In early August, a demolition crew removed about 90 feet of the old wooden trestle.
In late August, Nordland Construction began removing the remaining portions of the trestle.
Once the old trestle was completely removed in October, crews began driving steel pilings to support the new trestle into the ground at four locations.
After the steel pilings were driven, concrete piers were placed on top of the pilings to hold up the trestle.
A concrete pier beneath the existing Howe Truss bridge supports the new trestle where the two structures connect.
The new trestle began arriving in October in prefabricated 60-foot-long, 9-foot-deep sections.
The steel sections were manufactured by Wheeler Lumber LLC — a Minnesota firm that specializes in metal, fiberglass and timber prefabricated bridges — and transported to Sequim on flatbed trucks.
Crews bolted the sections together to create four 182-foot-long sections. A fifth 22-foot-long section was placed in the middle.
The final phase was to lower the walkway onto the piers with two massive cranes and install decking.
The new steel structure improves passage for salmon by allowing logs and fish to pass beneath with fewer obstructions than those of the old wooden trestle.
The tribe received a $1.5 million grant from the Washington Salmon Recovery Funding Board for the project.
It also contributed $270,000 from a Floodplains by Design grant from the state Department of Ecology and $606,100 in other funding from the tribe, the Peninsula Trails Coalition and the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Climate Adaptation program.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Chris McDaniel can be reached at 360-681-2390, ext. 5052, or cmcdaniel@peninsuladailynews.com.
