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Lucin Cutoff Railroad Trestle Great Salt Lake "The Trestlewood Story"

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Lucin Cutoff Railroad Trestle Great Salt Lake Lucin Cutoff Railroad Trestle Great Salt Lake "The Trestlewood Story" Introduction Add wood to the list of products coming out of Utah'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 United States 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.
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