Rail Makes Tough Trail But Miles Of Ankle-Twisting Rocks May Soon Be Crushed Into Gravel

Frank Galloway does not break his stride while offering advice for crossing an abandoned railroad trestle.

The secret, he says, is not to look between the tar-black railroad ties to lethargic Cow Creek, 132 feet below.

Don’t think about the occasional rotting timber.

Don’t worry about falling from the trestle, which has been without its tracks since 1991.

The state parks ranger plants his Vibram sole three ties ahead, then three more, crossing the 1,800-foot span in four or five minutes.

Trains carrying passengers and grain rumbled across the life-sized Erector set for the better part of a century, Galloway reminds jittery visitors. He figures it can handle a couple of hikers, along with the stream of bikes and horses he is certain will come within a few years.

Galloway is the first ranger for one of Washington’s newest and least-used parks: the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway Co. corridor between Fish Lake, just west of Cheney, and Ice Harbor Dam near Pasco.

State parks managers hope to turn the entire rail bed into a public trail at an estimated cost of $4 million.

The corridor is 132 miles of prehistory and history. Here, at least 7,000 men labored for pennies an hour, their muscle and sweat taming geology unique to the Columbia Basin. They spanned gorges sculpted by Ice Age floods, bored more than a mile of tunnel and leveled hillsides too steep for sheep.

The hills fought back. In 1987, Burlington-Northern closed the line it had acquired in a 1970 merger, saying it was too costly to keep the rails clear of falling boulders.

Four years later, BN tore up the SP&S tracks and gave the corridor to the state for safekeeping. Spokane received another 10.5 miles of the line, from Latah Creek in west Spokane to Fish Lake.

Under the national rail-bank system, BN can recover the 143-mile corridor if it ever decides to re-establish rail service. But the company must reimburse any investment the state and city make toward a trail.

Although the trail is officially open for non-motorized use, the jagged, fist-sized ballast used as a bed for the tracks makes for tough walking and riding. The five trestles and some of the five tunnels are gated and locked. Tumble mustard grows chest-high in places.

That soon may change.

Cheney has $500,000 in federal money to pave 3.5 miles of the state-owned corridor from the town’s sewage treatment plant to Fish Lake. Town officials hope to do the work this summer.

Spokane has $340,000 in federal money to pave three miles, possibly in 1997. The city was denied money for paving its remaining 7.5 miles of trail, but will apply again next year, said Paul Crutchfield, city parks manager.

Money permitting, state parks managers hope to crush the ballast from Cheney to Ice Harbor Dam, creating 130 miles of gravel trail where the paved trail ends.

While there’s no good estimate yet, park engineer Steve Wright thinks it will cost about $2 million to crush the rocks. It will cost at least that much more for privies, trail heads and signs, and to put decking and safety fences on the trestle over Cow Creek and four other canyons.

The first 12 miles on either end of the trail could be done next year, if the work meets the state’s $500,000 budget, Wright said. The schedule for future work depends on the amount of money the Legislature and state and federal transportation agencies put into the project.

“If we could get funding every year, we could have the major part of it done by 2000,” said Bill Fraser, state trail planner.

Fraser, Galloway and other trail boosters are confident the route will draw outdoors enthusiasts from throughout the region.

Kevin Axt, an avid mountain biker from Kennewick, rode 66 miles of the trail one three-day weekend in October.

Riding over the ballast was so tough, Axt said, he and a friend made only about 4 mph. Still, he was elated by “the scenery, the challenge, the chance to be alone.”

Axt thinks the trail will be most popular with hard-core bicyclists once the ballast is crushed and the trestles opened.

“It’s the same as people riding across America,” he said. “It won’t be your average family that will do it.”

Many of the railroad’s neighbors are skeptical about the trail.

Some worry about fires and other damage to their land. Others doubt the trail will draw enough use to justify its cost or to bolster the few struggling businesses along its route.

“We don’t expect to see much revenue off of it,” said Syd Sullivan, mayor of Washtucna, where 300 residents can eat in either of two restaurants.

Rancher Dick Coon Sr., who owns the parched land on either side of the Cow Creek trestle, said it’s tough for city people to comprehend the vastness of his corner of Franklin County, where it takes 20 acres to feed a cow. In places, the trail goes more than 10 miles without crossing a road.

“I go 12 miles just to get my mail,” said Coon, whose family has owned the Bar U Ranch for 50 years.

Coon wonders whether the state will maintain fences along the trail, and whether he’ll be allowed to move cattle from one side to the other.

“Would trail users be happy with cow manure scattered across the right of way?” he asked. “I don’t know.”

Cow pies or no, “it’s beautiful country,” said Coon.

“Railroading on the fringe of reality,” was how Trains magazine described the route in a bittersweet article announcing its abandonment in 1987.

The path pierces a remote and lush five miles of Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge, past Amber and Downs lakes, then leads through mile upon mile of channeled scablands formed by Ice Age floods. Columns of basalt stand like soldiers in some places, like stairs in others.

The trail crosses coulees, creeks and canyons before joining the Snake River in its final miles. Dust devils rise on the horizon.

Rattlesnakes are common and great horned owls nest at every tunnel. Ruddy ducks with sky-blue bills stop at Turnbull, sharing water with black terns that flit like fairies as they chase damsel flies.

Spring wildflowers bloom purple, yellow and pink, with lupine, black-eyed Susans and balsam root.

A trip on the trail is hot, dry and dusty. But the topography is friendly, thanks to laborers who built the rail line 88 years ago.

According to yellowed newspaper accounts, Spokane railroad magnate James Hill built the line because he despised the dips, rises and sharp turns in the Northern Pacific tracks that already covered the same route. He decreed that the new line be flat and straight.

From its high point in Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge, the grade of the SP&S was a steady 0.4 percent all the way to Pasco. That’s a drop of 21 feet for every mile of track.

A joint effort by Northern Pacific and Great Northern, the track was built in just a year, starting in February 1907. The railroads advertised for 7,000 laborers, paying them $2.50 a day less $1 for grub.

Workers stayed in tar paper shacks and provided their own bedding.

“We are having no trouble in getting all the men we want,” one foreman told The Spokesman-Review in 1908. “Some days, as many as 15 or 20 laborers come to camp and ask for work.”

It was tough duty, swinging picks and hauling rocks. The men pounded more than 1.5 million spikes and laid 12,000 tons of rail.

In places, basalt walls tower 50 feet above the railroad bed.

Rusted 5-gallon cans that once held gunpowder still mark the toughest spots, where rocks had to be blasted before they could be moved. Hillsides remain bare where millions of yards of earth and rock were removed to fill canyons.

At Cow Creek, seven coal-fired steam shovels hauled rocks to build the approaches to the trestle.

In Adams County, the railroad paid Frank Benge $5,000 for a right-of-way that went through the farmer’s house, barn and orchard. Today, the site is marked by a small community named for Benge - one of several whose fortunes have waned in recent years.

The rail line opened for passenger service on Nov. 22, 1908, and cut the time required for a trip from Spokane to Portland from 24 hours to 12. Passengers made the trip aboard the steam-powered North Bank Ltd.

The track would, Spokane newspapers boasted, open up the region to the riches of California.

Coon, the rancher whose property gives Cow Creek trestle its foothold to earth, thinks his land may again rumble from the weight of grain, lumber and steel being hauled to market.

“The day may come when we run out of fossil fuels” and turn from roads back to rails for transporting goods, he said.

In the meantime, the trestles will rumble only with shoe leather, knobby tires and hooves.

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