SEQUIM — Less than 12 hours after the main stretch of Railroad Bridge reopened, vandals wrought damage that sparked its closure Thursday morning.
The bridge across the Dungeness River had just been made accessible to the public Wednesday afternoon, but only as a viewing deck from which to see the damaged trestle on its western side.
The bridge and trestle in Railroad Bridge Park, 2151 W. Hendrickson Road, have been closed since Feb. 6, when a rain-swollen river tore away the trestle’s pilings.
A popular stretch of the Olympic Discovery Trail linking Sequim and Port Angeles, Railroad Bridge is expected to stay closed to through-traffic for months.
Peninsula Trails Coalition volunteers had spent Wednesday at the park finishing construction of a gate to block the collapsed trestle.
So the main span, whose sturdier pilings are driven deep into concrete below, opened up for afternoon visitors.
“We had quite a few people up on the bridge as we were packing up our tools,” said Gordon Taylor, the Peninsula Trails Coalition special projects manager who built the gate.
Taylor and his crew also put up a sign warning “Danger” and “Do not go beyond this point.”
Vandalized gate
The vandals not only peeled away the gate’s chicken wire, climbed onto the trestle and kicked the gate open from the inside, he said, but also threw the sign into the Dungeness River.
The damage was discovered at about 7 a.m. Thursday, said Powell Jones, director of the adjacent Dungeness River Audubon Center.
After conferring with the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe, which owns the park, Jones closed the entire bridge until further notice.
“I need to keep it a safe environment,” he said, adding that the trestle is “flat-out dangerous.”
At the same time, he understands that people are curious and want to get up onto the span to see the trestle, the river and its wildlife.
What he doesn’t understand is why someone would tear apart the fruit of what he estimates was 40 hours of volunteer labor.
“One bad apple,” Jones said.
Try again
But both he and Taylor are ready to try again.
“We’re going to go up there, make some changes to [the gate], reinforce it and look at installing cameras,” Jones said.
Taylor said he’s not averse to rebuilding the barrier and even working on another gate on the western side of the trestle.
Jones, meanwhile, said if he can obtain a security camera and a sign informing people that they are being photographed by it, the main Railroad Bridge viewing deck could reopen this weekend.
As for rebuilding the trestle itself, Jamestown chief operations officer Annette Nesse said the tribe is seeking federal and state funding — having contacted U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer of the 6th Congressional District and state Rep. Steve Tharinger of the 24th Legislative District — to redesign and rebuild the trestle.
Nesse said it’s too early to estimate costs.
Meanwhile, “we keep plugging away,” Taylor said of the Peninsula Trails Coalition.
The 28-year-old group of volunteers maintains the Olympic Discovery Trail, the hiking-cycling-equestrian path running through Jefferson and Clallam counties.
It begins in Port Townsend, has legs from Sequim to Port Angeles and points west, with the vision of eventually extending it all the way to LaPush on the Pacific Ocean.
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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.
