Hardships Encountered In Bridging The Grand Canyon

VACATION LAND, 1929 ARIZONA HIGHWAYS Page Fifteen Hardships Encountered In Bridging The Grand Canyon

THE building of the Grand Canyon Bridge entailed greater hardships and dangers to the men in charge than any other highway job. The usual highway construction job means only the inconvenience of living in camp, and these camps are generally fitted with all possible conveniences. No one is in actual danger, with the possible exception of that arising from blasting, during the entire construction period. This article is written so the averag person may realize and visualize the hardships and dangers to which the men who fought this great construction pro-ject to completion were subjected, and to give credit to those who went through these many weary months.

The men had no regular hours. The day's work was ended when they reached camp for the night. This may have been five o'clock the usual end of a day-or it may have been two o'clock in the morning, depending upon how fortunate they were on that day.

The first difficulty encountered was the haul from Flagstaff, the nearest railroad point to the construction on the south side. The north side was an entirely different matter, as I will show later. The construction site on the south rim was 135 miles from Flagstaff, over 53 miles of very good county road, except during snowfall. Then the trip meant fighting from six inches to two feet of snow, no sport when the temperature is below zero and you are driving a loaded truck. From Cameron it was 82 miles over Indian trails. These are not any too well maintained. They are fair in dry weather for travel at about fifteen or twenty miles per hour, but when it rains, say your prayers!

R. C. Perkins and I, district engineers, at the time thought we endured hardships, but our tasks were easy compared to those of the other men on the project.

Once I left the ferry at four o'clock in the afternoon and reached Flagstaff at 2:30 the next morning, traveling, or trying to travel, all of the time, and I had a closed car with chains on the four wheels. From this you may draw your own picture of what the workers encountered, with a three ton truck fully loaded, with an open cab, trying to get through wind, snow, rain and mud, with the temperature at times below zero. Let us follow through on the trans-portation problem which was one-half of the difficulty encountered. We have reached construction on one side of the canyon, let us see how we reached the other side. From the south side to find a place where the water edge could be reached at the site of the old ferry, one had to travel up the Colorado River

Grand Canyon Bridge in Infancy

for about six miles, the last two miles of which was over what is called the "dugway," a road barely wide enough for the two wheels of a car or truck, cut in the bare sandstone bluffs hanging in places four or five hundred feet above the river. With few exceptions there was no room to pass other cars and only six inches to one foot between one and a vertical drop of several hundred feet to the river below. The grades or hills on the dugway were as steep as 25 per cent, and it seemed at times as though one was climbing straight up the sides of a house. Parts of the dugway were held in place by a dry stone wall built on the lower side, and in wet weather no one was authorized to travel the road. At times, however, when necessity demanded, the road was traveled when wet. The old ferry boat at Lee's Ferry consisted of a flat-bottomed boat of ancient vintage, fastened to a cable strung across the river, propelled by the force of the current, but necessitating considerable pushing and pulling to effect a landing. This ferry boat, in all probability, would have lived its allotted. three score years and ten and now be resting peacefully in some museum instead of on the bottom of the river if the construction of the new bridge had not thrown extra burdens upon the already decrepit ship. The boys used the ferry to transport cars and supplies across the river, realizing the danger, up to within three hours of the time it finally sank, drowning three men. The body of one of these was recovered six weeks after the sinking of the boat; the others were not found.

After the ferry-boat sank, transporting cars across the river was out of the question, but supplies and materials were transported to the other side. It then became necessary to send cars. around by Needles, California, Los Vegas, Nevada, and St. George, Utah - a distance of 800 miles, in order to cover a distance of 800 feet.

After the loss of the ferry-boat the department placed an outboard motor on a sixteen-foot row-boat to transport carts, wagons, gasoline, powder, hay, grain, etc., for use on the north side of the river. This did not lessen but increased the danger of crossing the river, for I have seen the boat loaded until it was invisible.

This would not necessarily have been dangerous on a lake or in still water, but strange as it may seem, the Colorado River at this point was at times nearly choked with large blocks of floating ice. During the summer and fall freshets the same was true of driftwood, sometimes large trees, partly submerged and incapable of being seen from the surface, a dangerous menace when one is depending upon an outboard motor.

An accident meant disaster to even an expert swimmer, for there are two features of the Colorado River which render it dangerous to any swimmer, especially if he is clothed. The heavy silt content of the river water immediately makes a sand-bag of one's clothing and drags him down.

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silt content of the river water immediately makes a sand-bag of one's clothing and drags him down.

Also, the river is full of whirlpools, and once caught in one of these, drowning is usually the result. I have seen a dog in one of these whirlpools struggling for six hours before breaking away and reaching the bank.

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS Going to Work in the Latter Days of the Bridge

dog in one of these whirlpools struggling for six hours before breaking away and reaching the bank.

I recall only one instance where any one of the boys had to take to the river from the boat, but the danger was always present. On this occasion a sunken drift-log sheared the pin holding the propellor of the motor and the boatman took to the oars. One of the oars broke, throwing him back, and he lost the other. In smooth water he could have stayed in the boat and drifted to the bank, but this crossing is but a few hundred feet above one of the dangerous rapids to be found on the Colorado River. The swiftness of the current would have carried him to the rapids in a very short time, so the only thing to do was to take to the water and swim. He had the presence of mind to discard his clothing before jumping and made a safe landing. Personally I had decided objections to riding either the ferry or the loaded boat, and I am sure that most of the boys shared my prejudice; but you never heard anyone voice these objections. It was part of the day's work.

After the material and supplies were taken across the river they were loaded into trucks and hauled seven milesmud that it will float a rock. Contending with these two obstacles caused the boys to miss many a meal and sometimes a place to sleep.

Adding these distances you will find that all supplies and materials destinedfor construction on the north side of the river, after being hauled the 135 miles to the south side, were then hauled fourteen miles to transfer them 800 feet. Not quite as bad as the 800 miles of the Needles route, but infinitely more dangerous. Furthermore, it was necessary to make this haul daily.

VACATION LAND, 1929

As to the construction of the bridge itself, after all materials had been transported to the site of construction, it was an engineering task, a task to appall the most hardy. Two vertical walls of rock on each side of the river, 500 or more feet from the top to the water's edge, upon which footings or foundations had to be made, one for each end of the bridge. These foundations were cut into the vertical face of the cliff, 70 feet deep and 25 to 30 feet square. Men were suspended by ropes over these vertical cliffs 500 feet above the water to start these excavations, drilling and loading the holes with powder lowered to them. After these excavations were shaped out and started, rope ladders were used, and climbing a rope ladder is no joy-ride. On completion of the 70foot excavations huge concrete pedestals had to be constructed at the bottom, the material for the pedestals being lowered into the excavations.

The work to this point was done by state highway forces. The Kansas City Structural Steel Company was awarded the contract for the construction of(Continued on page 57)