Lucin Cutoff Railroad Trestle "The Trestlewood Story"

Introduction

Add wood to the list of products coming out of 's Great Salt Lake.

No, the lake does not grow wood. It is not home to a great underwater forest, at least not a living one. It is, though, the address of the historic Lucin Cutoff Railroad Trestle and its tens of millions of board feet of Douglas Fir timbers and piling and Redwood decking. Decades after the trestle was replaced by a solid fill causeway built parallel to it, the wood of the trestle is being reclaimed and reused.

From spike holes in resawn timbers to the unique coloring of flooring produced from "pickled" piling, the wood reclaimed from the trestle bears the stamp of the Great Salt Lake. This wood is now as much a product of the Great Salt Lake as it is of the forests from which it was originally cut.

This article examines the fascinating history of the Great Salt Lake's Lucin Cutoff railroad trestle, from its construction at the beginning of the 1900s to some of the applications that its wood is being used in today. First, though, an effort should be made to put this article into the proper context by briefly describing the situation that preceded the construction of the trestle.

Before the Trestle

The simple message was dispatched at 12:47 P.M.: "Done." That unusually brief telegraphic notice on May 10, 1869, set off what may have been the most widespread celebration the had witnessed to that time. Fifty tugboats whistled salutes as they paraded along the lakefront in Chicago; New Yorkers shouted with glee at the conclusion of a 100-gun salute; the national capital staged banquets, parades, and a spectacular fireworks display; and prayers and toasts were intermingled throughout the thirty-seven states and territories. . . (T)he event. . . was the completion of the country's first transcontinental railroad. The rails joined at Promontory, a desolate, windswept, and heretofore unremarked spot in what became the state of Utah. . . (Hofsommer, Don L. The Southern Pacific, 1901-1985. Texas A&M University Press. 1986.)

The golden spike would not have been driven at Promontory had the Union Pacific not encountered an obstacle as it worked its way to a junction with the Central Pacific. That obstacle was the Great Salt Lake. Union Pacific toyed with the possibility of crossing the lake, but ultimately chose a less challenging alternative:

(T)hey [Union Pacific engineers] discussed a little, though perhaps more jocularly than seriously, the feasibility of driving straight across the lake, or at least across its eastern arm. Of course they gave it up. The idea then was almost chimerical. There was neither the genius in finance bold enough to undertake such a stupendous work, nor the traffic to warrant such an expenditure. It may be doubted, too, if there was engineering faith equal to the task. So the line was built up through the hills around the north end of the lake. (Davis, Oscar King. "The Lucin Cut-Off". The Century Magazine. Jan, 1906, p. 459)

One might say that Promontory owed its moment of glory on the nation's stage to the Great Salt Lake. Promontory's place in the limelight came to an end when Southern Pacific successfully crossed the Great Salt Lake via the Lucin Cutoff.

Construction

Shortly after the turn of the century, conditions were ripe for an attempted conquering of the Great Salt Lake. Rail traffic had increased. The Promontory Line "had developed into the chief bottleneck of the whole transcontinental line." (Miller, David E. Great Salt Lake Past and Present. Publishers Press. 5th edition by Anne M. Eckman, 1994, p. 38) Southern Pacific was led by visionaries who believed the railroad could cross the lake. William Hood, Southern Pacific's chief engineer, "had always dreamed of routing the lines straight across the lake." (Dant, Doris R., "Bridge: A Railroading Community on the Great Salt Lake." Utah Historical Quarterly 53, no. 1 (Winter 1985), p. 56) He found an ally in the head of Southern Pacific, Edward H. Harriman, "a man whose financial ability and boldness matched the engineering skill and pluck of Mr. Hood." (Davis, p. 459) The abilities and vision of these men were able to take root in a business environment which had become more conducive to bold, long-term investment:

The times had changed. The day of great and bold enterprises had come. The old era of pinching and often false economy, that let road-bed and rolling-stock run down in order to squeeze out an unjustified dividend, was ended. The condition had been reached where it was only necessary for the engineer to show how the interest on the investment could be made to be told to go ahead. (Davis, p. 460)

Apparently Mr. Hood was able to show Mr. Harriman that the interest on the investment could be made, because the work on the Lucin Cutoff began. This was an ambitious project. It involved 103 miles of new track between Ogden and Lucin, including an almost 12-mile-long permanent wooden trestle and several more miles of rock and gravel fill through shallow lake brine. Temporary trestles were used to help construct much of the fill. (Hofsommer, p. 17; Miller, p. 38)

Perhaps even more impressive than the magnitude of the Lucin Cutoff was the speed with which it was constructed. Construction of the approaches to the east and west sides of the lake started in February, 1902. The first piles were driven into the bed of the Great Salt Lake in August, 1902. By October, 1903, the permanent trestle was completed. The Lucin Cutoff was put into service on March 8, 1904, just over two years after the start of construction.

Southern Pacific made this aggressive schedule possible by throwing massive amounts of resources at the project. The project was not to be delayed by a shortage of materials, equipment or manpower.

A "perfect forest of piles," not to mention millions and millions of board feet of timbers, was diverted from more typical destinations to the Great Salt Lake for the construction of the

2 permanent and temporary trestles. (Davis, p. 463) Almost unfathomable amounts of rock and gravel (fortunately, available locally) were used to construct the fills.

Large amounts of equipment were needed to handle these materials. Southern Pacific gathered as much equipment as it could. It commissioned the fabrication of 25 huge pile drivers in San Francisco. It bought, borrowed or begged over 800 dump rail cars and lined up 80 locomotives with which to pull them. It purchased 8 five-cubic-yard steam shovels.

Of course, large numbers of workers were also needed. At times, over 3000 men were working on the cutoff, about 1000 of them on the trestle. Workers were paid between $2.00 (unskilled laborers) and $4.00 or $4.50 (skilled mechanics, carpenters, bridge-workers and engineers) per day. (Davis, p. 464) Men working on the trestle quickly settled into a very predictable routine:

A station was erected at each mile-end of the projected road. There two pile-drivers went to work back to back, driving away from each other. Five bents of five piles each, or seventy-five feet in all, was a good day's work. At each station a boardinghouse was built on a platform raised on piles well out of the way of storm- waves. There the men lived until their work was finished. The company furnished supplies and cooks, and the men paid four dollars a week for their board. They worked in ten-hour shifts, day and night, Sundays and holidays. (Davis, p. 465)

Bad weather provided about the only break in this routine:

There was never a hindrance on the permanent trestle, save when now and then a heavy storm smashed a log-boom and sent the scattered timbers and piles cruising about the lake on their own account, to be slowly and painfully collected again by the launches and towed back to new booms, while the men in the boarding-houses played cards, read, smoked, and talked, and drew their pay in idleness. (Davis, p. 467)

Of course, bad weather was not the only source of challenges. The sheer magnitude of the project, combined with its remote location, created mind-boggling logistical issues:

A constant problem resulted from the need to supply water-in the amount of 500,000 gallons daily-for the locomotives, pile drivers, steam shovels, and boats employed on the project. Much of it was hauled from Deeth, Nevada, to Lakeside, 145 miles. (Hofsommer, p. 16)

Driving the thousands of piles of the permanent and temporary trestles was not an easy task:

Water in the permanent trestle section varied from 30 to 34 feet in depth and piles had to be driven many feet into the lake bottom in order to insure a stable structure. When 'soft spots' were struck a 100-foot pile could often be driven out of sight without

3 striking solid footing. In such places it was necessary to lash two piles together and drive them into the lake in order to make a solid trestle. (Miller, pp. 39-40)

In other areas of the lake just the opposite problem was encountered:

The progress would be much slower either at this side of the western arm of the lake or at the other side when the 3,200-pound hammers could drive a pile only a few inches. Sometimes, when the pile was already thirty to forty feet deep, it would rebound two or three feet after being struck. Then a hole had to be steam-blasted. (Dant, p. 57)

All things considered, though, the construction of the permanent and temporary trestles went remarkably smoothly. The project's greatest challenge, contending with the settling of the fill, was not even trestle-related:

Here the real work of building the Lucin Cut-Off came in. For a year and nine months that thing [settlement] kept up. . . That first sink began a fight the like of which has not been seen in railroad engineering. It became, apparently, the stupendous task of filling up the bottomless pit. Twenty-five hundred men were at it day and night without cessation. Every hour saw at least one great material-train thrust out on the crazy track to pour its tons of rock and gravel into the greedy, yawning hole. (Davis, p. 467)

Eventually the 2500 men prevailed. The result was the completed Lucin Cutoff, "one of the most remarkable and courageous engineering accomplishments of the time." (Hofsommer, p. 17) Thomas A. Edison affixed his stamp of approval: "The Salt Lake cut-off is certainly a bold piece of engineering and well worth seeing." (Hofsommer, p. 17)

Service

The Lucin Cutoff was a resounding success. It rendered the Promontory Line around the north end of the Great Salt Lake obsolete and proved worthy of its name:

It is a "cut-off" indeed. . . Forty-three miles in distance are lopped off, heartbreaking grades avoided, curves eliminated, hours of time in transit saved, and untold worry and vexation prevented, at the same time that expenses of operation are reduced more than enough to pay interest on the whole cost twice over. (Davis, p. 460)

The cutoff was hailed as both an engineering and a financial victory:

The Lucin Cut-Off is complete, and Mr. Hood, the engineer, is justified for his faith. So, too, is Mr. Harriman, the financier; for in January, 1905, the operating expenses of the new road were sixty-one thousand dollars less than the operating expenses of the old road in January, 1904, although the traffic was greater. (Davis, p. 468)

4 Despite dire predictions by pre-construction skeptics, the trestle portion of the cutoff performed admirably. In fact, the six-day period that the trestle was out of commission following a May 4, 1956, fire was the first time in its life that it had been out of service.

Which is not to say that the trestle was maintenance- free. Southern Pacific beefed up the trestle with several thousand additional piles throughout its service life. By the 1950s, the trestle contained over 38,000 piles. Many of the original Douglas Fir cap and deck timbers and Redwood deck planks had been replaced by this time, also.

The beginning of the end of the trestle's life as a trestle came in the 1950s, when Southern Pacific decided to replace the trestle with a solid fill causeway. Construction of this causeway, which ran parallel to the trestle, began in 1955. The new causeway handled its first traffic in July, 1959. Southern Pacific continued to maintain the trestle as a back-up for a few years, but the trestle had seen its last significant traffic by the beginning of the 1960s.

Salvage

The trestle may have been near the end of its life as a trestle as the 1960s started, but its story had just begun. The 1960s through the early 1990s brought over thirty years of well-deserved rest from the heavy train traffic of its almost 60 years of service. Nature was not so kind. The wind and the waves accompanying the intermittent fierce storms on the Great Salt Lake began to take their toll on the trestle, which was no longer being maintained as it had been when it was the railroad's only means of crossing the lake. Piece by piece, handrail and deck materials were broken free and blown or washed into the lake. In not too many years, the trestle was no longer fit to be even a back-up means of crossing the lake.

The trestle was given new life in the early 1990s. In March of 1993, Cannon Structures, Inc. obtained salvage rights to the trestle from T.C. Taylor Co., Ltd., which had previously acquired these rights from Southern Pacific. Cannon soon thereafter established its Trestlewood Division, through which it has been salvaging, remanufacturing and marketing the wood from the trestle ever since.

A 48' x 165' work barge (itself salvaged and restored to serviceable condition after being abandoned decades earlier following the building of the causeway that replaced the trestle), freight barges, cranes, a pile extractor attachment, excavators, tugboats, workers and a subcontractor have all played key roles in Trestlewood's trestle salvage efforts.

5 The basic salvage process is a relatively simple one: men and equipment, working off the work barge, load salvaged wood onto the work barge and/or freight barges; when these barges are full, they are pushed to shore by a tugboat, where they are unloaded and pushed back out to the trestle for another load.

Trestlewood has conducted the salvage of the trestle in two stages. It first salvaged the above-water Douglas Fir timbers and Redwood decking. It then turned to the salvage of the Douglas Fir piling. A subcontractor, Hein Timber Products, has salvaged most of these piling.

The pile driver/extractor attachment plays an important role in salvaging the piling. This crane attachment is placed over the butt (large diameter) end of the pole to be pulled. It vibrates the pole until the suction between the tip (small diameter) end of the pole and the sediment on the bottom of the lake is broken. The pole can then be pulled out of the lake by the crane and placed on the work barge for eventual transportation to shore.

Trestlewood has faced many of the same issues in its salvaging of the trestle as Southern Pacific faced in building it. The most difficult issues always seem to come back to the Great Salt Lake.

Weather is a big issue. The Great Salt Lake sponsors some fierce storms, the fiercest component of which is typically the wind. The only real option in dealing with storms of any magnitude is to get off the lake and wait them out. Even this option does not eliminate the risk of damage-Trestlewood has had docked boats sunk by these storms on five or six occasions. Spring's south winds are especially tough on the trestle salvage operation. Winters have been surprisingly mild: (1) the Great Salt Lake and have received less snow than the in general (the dreaded "lake effect" does not seem to impact the lake as much as it does surrounding areas) and (2) the salvage operation is largely protected from winter's north winds by the causeway.

The Great Salt Lake also exacts its tolls in the form of increased maintenance costs. The fluctuating levels of the lake result in significant ongoing dock maintenance costs. The lake's salt has a very corrosive impact on metal equipment, barges and boats. Boat electrical systems have been especially hard hit.

One of the largest challenges posed by the Great Salt Lake is transportation-related. The lake does not make it easy to get men to work or salvaged wood to shore. Getting workers out to the trestle in the morning typically takes thirty minutes to an hour; getting them back to shore at the end of the day takes a similar amount of time. Pushing barges full of salvaged wood to shore can take several hours.

6 If it were not for the work barge, piling transportation would be an even bigger issue. Salvaged poles are typically 50 to 80 feet long, with a few poles longer than 100 feet. A "typical" 65 foot pole weighs about 4,000 pounds. It would take only 12 such poles to reach the 48,000 pound maximum payload of an over-the-road tractor-trailer. Fortunately, the work barge can typically handle loads of 200 to 250 poles. The barge's million pound payload has been a real boon to Trestlewood's piling salvage efforts.

By mid 2000, over seven years into its salvage efforts, Trestlewood has brought essentially all of the Douglas Fir timbers and Redwood decking to shore and about three-quarters of the Douglas Fir piling. In other words, it has taken Trestlewood over seven years to take down less than Southern Pacific put up in one year. Of course, Trestlewood's two to six person salvage crew (less than 1% of the number of men Southern Pacific typically had working on trestle construction) has something to do with this disparity. The trestle salvage schedule has also been impacted by (1) a desire to handle the salvaged wood as carefully as possible in order to preserve its value and (2) remanufacturing and marketing issues.

Remanufacturing

Once the wood salvaged from the trestle reaches the shore, it typically requires some processing, or remanufacturing, before it can be sold. When Trestlewood started salvaging trestle materials, it did not picture itself doing much remanufacturing. After all, it had over 30 million board feet of wood to deal with (approximately 10 million BF of Douglas Fir timbers; 2 million BF of Redwood decking; and 20 million BF of Douglas Fir piling)-why not focus its efforts on salvaging the wood and loading it onto trucks and railcars for immediate shipment to companies who were better equipped to manufacture it into products?

It did not turn out this way. Manufacturers who were large enough to handle the volume of trestle materials being salvaged were used to dealing with new logs and lumber. They were looking for standard stock that they could run through standard processes and turn into standard products. Trestlewood was not standard stock. Trestlewood discovered that it needed to take an active role in identifying and creating markets and producing products that were ideally suited to the unique features of the wood from the trestle.

The wood from the trestle has presented several challenges to Trestlewood's remanufacturing efforts. Probably the most prevalent challenge is metal. Essentially all of the timbers salvaged from the trestle have nails, bolts and/or spikes in them. Trestlewood uses a variety of approaches in dealing with this metal. In some cases, it can produce metal-free timbers by cutting off ends or ripping timbers into one metal- free piece and one metal-infested piece. Where markets do not require timbers to be free of metal, Trestlewood often just cuts any protruding metal flush (or leaves it protruding for more rustic applications).

Finally, in many cases Trestlewood removes metal from timbers in order to make them metal-free. The most noteworthy example of this involves the trestle's 14x14 pile caps. As they come off the trestle, these timbers have numerous 3/4" to 1" diameter bolts and spikes protruding from all four faces at a variety of angles. They seem impossible to demetal. However, Emil Hein of Hein Timber Products designed and built a special hydraulic machine that can successfully remove all of the metal from a high percentage of the pile caps. The result is a metal-free, albeit holey, timber that has become very popular in "distressed" timber applications.

7

In general, metal and other issues (checking, grit, etc.) make reclaimed wood more difficult to process than new wood. The Great Salt Lake introduces additional issues that are unique even for reclaimed wood. This is especially true of the Douglas Fir piling that have been submerged in the Great Salt Lake. These poles are water and salt saturated as they come off the lake. Tests show that the poles often consist of more than 20% salt by weight, all the way to the core.

The salt and other minerals in the piling result in unique, colorful flooring and timber products (see "Marketing" and "Applications" sections). They also create remanufacturing hurdles. As might be expected, the salt is hard on saws and other wood-processing equipment. The weight of the piling creates handling and transportation challenges. The affinity of salt for water makes lumber cut from the piling more difficult to dry than "normal" Douglas Fir lumber (Trestlewood's experience has been that it takes about twice as long to kiln dry 4/4 (1") lumber cut from the piling as it does to kiln dry typical green 4/4 Douglas Fir lumber.) Cutting into the brine-soaked piling unleashes some very strong odors which tend to go away as the wood dries, but which can make processing wet poles a bit unpleasant.

One of the most important things that Trestlewood has had going for it in its remanufacturing efforts is its complete lack of experience in processing new lumber. Trestlewood has not faced the temptation of trying to fit materials from the trestle into an existing new lumber manufacturing processes. It has not had to decide if it is willing to put reclaimed wood through expensive, high-production machinery. Instead, Trestlewood has been able to design its remanufacturing processes and machinery from the ground up, based upon the physical characteristics of the wood from the trestle.

Trestlewood has increased its involvement in the remanufacturing process incrementally. It started by bringing on line the circular saw and cut-off saws necessary to produce 3' crib blocks for mines. It has since upgraded its sawmill capabilities and invested in such improvements as the pile cap metal removal mill discussed previously; a rough planer; a 30,000 board foot dehumidification kiln; and storage facilities. Since early in the project, Trestlewood has done most of its rough, industrial-grade processing at Promontory Point and most of its finish, higher-end processing at its headquarters in Blackfoot, Idaho. Trestlewood has also supplemented its own remanufacturing efforts with the processing capabilities of a handful of small, but talented, manufacturing partners.

Trestlewood's incremental improvements to its own remanufacturing capabilities and its selective use of remanufacturing subcontractors has significantly increased the breadth and depth of its product lines. In the early years of the trestle project, a very high percentage of Trestlewood's revenues came from crib blocks and rough timber stock. By mid 2000, revenues were spread across many more product lines, with Trestlewood's focus moving increasingly in the direction of higher-end, further-processed products like flooring and architectural timbers.

Marketing Once the wood from the trestle hits the shore and is remanufactured into a usable product, one key task, perhaps the most important one of all, remains: marketing. Actually, this

8 statement is oversimplified. It implies that marketing follows neatly on the heels of salvage and remanufacturing. In reality, the marketing of the wood from the trestle has driven the salvage and remanufacturing of the wood at least as much as it has been driven by them. Trestlewood's salvage and remanufacturing efforts have been heavily influenced by the company's marketing successes and failures.

And, yes, Trestlewood marketing has seen both successes and failures. Marketing the wood from the trestle can be both simple and difficult at the same time. On one hand, the wood from the trestle has a lot going for it. It is beautiful, unique, full of history and character and 100% reclaimed. Much of it is very tight-grained.

This does not mean, however, that the wood sells itself. Trestlewood's uniqueness and other characteristics, while tremendous advantages, make it different from standard products on the market. As a result, Trestlewood has found that it has to take a very active role in identifying, and sometimes even creating, markets that fit each element coming off the trestle and then in educating the players in each market about Trestlewood. Each trestle element has its own set of physical characteristics that impact product development and marketing. Yes, new products benefit to a certain extent from previous marketing efforts associated with other products, but they also require their own specific market development efforts.

Much of the product development process boils down to turning negatives into positives, disadvantages into features. This does not mean tricking customers into thinking negatives are really positives. It means (1) identifying markets which are likely to value the characteristics of a particular element and then (2) getting the element in front of the right people in the market.

Even after investing much effort in market identification and creation and Trestlewood product education, one other important ingredient is invariably required: time. Often it takes just the right project or set of projects to catch the market's attention and get a particular product line moving. The specific time frame varies, but the process is essentially the same from product to product.

Consider the history of Trestlewood's custom-cut timber product lines. Trestlewood's first significant custom timber sales were of timbers cut from the trestle's 8" x 16" x 30' Douglas Fir stringers (which timbers came on line several months after the crib blocks cut from the metal side of the same stringers became Trestlewood's first major product.) Over time, these timbers became very popular.

When the stringers were depleted, the primary custom timber source became the demetalled 14" x 14" x 18' Douglas Fir pile caps. The pile caps were from the same project and of the same species as the stringers, but they were a very different product. Most importantly, they were full of holes (and large holes, at that). Initially, there was a large drop-off from stringer timber sales to pile cap timber sales. Given some time and a handful of impressive projects which featured the pile caps, however, the situation reversed itself. Eventually, the pile cap timbers became very popular in their own right. The holes in the pile cap timbers became a selling point, especially among customers who wanted a rustic, "distressed timber" look.

By the end of 1998, pile cap quantities were also dwindling, and Trestlewood's new primary custom timber source became the Douglas Fir piling. Timbers cut from the piling are as different from the pile cap timbers as the pile cap timbers were from the timbers cut from the stringers. The salt and other minerals in these timbers create their own unique challenges and opportunities. Sales of timbers cut from the piling (which Trestlewood calls its "Trestlewood II" timbers) started slowly while the pile cap timbers were still available. By mid 2000, Trestlewood II timber sales are picking up steam and are well on their way to becoming Trestlewood's best custom timber source yet.

9

As has already been indicated in the "Remanufacturing" section, the breadth and depth of Trestlewood's product lines has grown with time. What started as a limited set of products, focusing on crib blocks and rough stock, has become complete flooring, timber, accessory (millwork, siding, decking, etc.), pole and industrial lines.

The Great Salt Lake is a key player in the marketing of wood reclaimed from the trestle. The history surrounding the lake and the wood is an attractive selling point. Even more important is the Great Salt Lake's contribution to the physical characteristics and, hence, the unique selling points, of each element salvaged from the trestle.

There are no better examples of the Great Salt Lake's role in creating unique wood products than the Trestlewood II products produced from the Douglas Fir piling that have been submerged in the lake for close to a century. When these poles were first driven into the lake bed, they were long and straight but otherwise rather ordinary. The Great Salt Lake made sure that the poles were not ordinary by the end of their stay in the lake. Flooring, timbers and other products cut from the "pickled" piling boast unique, stunning coloring that sets them apart from other wood products. Even as the Great Salt Lake was creating remanufacturing challenges, then, it was more than making up for it by imbuing the trestle's wood with unique physical characteristics that play primary roles in the marketing of the wood.

Finally, it should be noted that distributors play an important role in Trestlewood's marketing efforts. The quantity of materials coming off the trestle made it imperative that Trestlewood involve others in selling the trestle's wood. Over time, Trestlewood has assembled a solid core group of distribution partners who help get Trestlewood into the hands of its ultimate users. Intermountain Wood Products and its Antiquus Wood Products division have been an especially valuable distribution partner.

Applications

This is the fun part. Close to a hundred years after the Lucin Cutoff railroad trestle was originally built, and almost forty years since its last significant service, the wood from the trestle is enjoying a rebirth. Some of this wood is popping up in some very prominent places. Just as significantly, it is being used in several homes and other lower-profile projects.

Wood reclaimed from the trestle is being used in a wide variety of ways, from construction and industrial applications to architectural and other high-end applications. Timbers. . . Flooring. . . Decking. . . Poles. . . Millwork. . . Doors. . . Siding. . . Furniture. . . Cabinets. . . Mantels. . . The list of Trestlewood applications is long, and growing longer.

The has accounted for a high percentage of Trestlewood sales. This percentage can be expected to decrease as Trestlewood's geographic reach continues to expand. Wood from the trestle has already been shipped as far away as Martha's Vineyard, the Philippines and Japan.

The list of projects using wood from the trestle will continue to grow. It is remarkable that an old train trestle has contributed in fundamental ways to so many new projects, high and low- profile alike.

See the product sections of www.trestlewood.com for more specific information about how and where wood from the Lucin Cutoff railroad trestle is being used.

10