Landmarks: Historic bridge crosses over old town of Marshall, rail lines

The Marshall Creek Bridge on the Cheney-Spokane Road provides such an easy flow from highway to bridge that drivers are hardly aware they have transitioned to a 547-foot-long structure high in the air and spanning a deep canyon in which the town of Marshall is located.

When the steel and concrete overpass was built in 1949, it facilitated crossing several rail lines that run through the canyon, replacing an old timber bridge that had zigzagged over the tracks. The “new” bridge crosses the mainline rail yard and switching center of the old Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railroad, Union Pacific Railroad and Northern Pacific Railroad. Beneath it are two SP&S tracks, two through- and two diverging-NP tracks and space for two additional through-tracks. The bridge also crosses Marshall Creek.

When the Cheney-Spokane Road was paved in 1946, it established an alternate route between the two cities which today is considered by students driving between Spokane and Eastern Washington University in Cheney as traveling “the back way,” rather than taking Interstate 90.

There was a time when things were booming, relatively speaking, in Marshall, though now that early settlement and development activities have passed into history, it is a much quieter community. At the height of development in the 1890s, there were two general stores, a butcher shop, a post office, blacksmith, lumber store, two hotels, a boarding house, three saloons and a school – plus a sawmill, flour mill, distillery, dairy and a cemetery. Joan Mamanakis at the Cheney Historical Museum notes that a number of dynamite factories supplying the military and the construction industry were located there, plus a convict camp south of town (which became a state prison around 1910).

Also notable were the Spokane Greenhouses which were situated over Marshall Creek, established there in 1918, and which supplied fresh flowers on a daily basis to the Davenport Hotel and other hotels and flower shops in Spokane.

The town itself came into being after California lumberman William Marshall arrived in the area in 1878, filed a homestead claim, dammed the creek to form a small lake and set up a water-powered saw mill. The site soon became known as Marshall. In 1880 it became a staging area for laborers and equipment in preparation for the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railroad, and all supporting businesses expanded from there.

The railroad made a number of things possible for township residents. Twice-daily passenger service between Spokane and Marshall was made available early on. There was also – for the price of 35 cents – service in a gas-powered one-car mail coach to Cheney or Coulee City, and passenger service on weekends to Pullman.

The school there closed in 1958 when it merged into the Cheney School District and activities have ratcheted down in Marshall as businesses moved or closed, additional sources of energy were found and the automobile made travel instantly convenient. The post office remains, but the general store and most other commercial enterprises are gone.

Harry Wear, 83, moved to Marshall in 1975 and raised his family there. He came there because a friend found a house for him for $10,000, and so he moved in and also opened the Marshall Meadows Lumber Co., which he operated for five years. He worked many jobs in the region – helping build Boundary Dam, driving truck, working in the timber and railroading industries and more. He likes Marshall just fine.

“We’ve got maybe 50 families here now,” he said, “and I think we’re the safest place to live in the county. We all keep our eyes open and watch out for one another.” But he does remember some difficulties that Marshall has experienced in his days there – most notably two fires that burned through the canyon’s grassland and trees “and nearly burned us out.”

The community of Marshall sits below the bridge and is practically unnoticed by those traveling across it. This somewhat over-looked bridge has a bit of claim to fame, as it was designed by W.L. Malony, bridge engineer for the city of Spokane. While serving in that capacity, other important bridges were built in the county, including the Washington Street Bridge and Latah Creek Bridge. When he was in private practice, Malony designed several building for Washington State University, including Bohler Gymnasium.

The Marshall Creek Bridge has some special physical features – notably being designed as a continuous structure using a state-of-the-art mathematical analysis for such structures. Its parabolically arched T-beam structure, considered an exceptional example of this type of construction, consists of 10 main spans in varying lengths and is considered to be a successful adaption of new highway bridge construction in spanning an existing railroad transportation corridor.

For these reasons the bridge was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.