The Columbian from Vancouver, Washington • 11

He COLUMBIAN A1 a CROSSING THE COLUMBIA AGAIN With iron bands we clasped hands MM 3917 opening of Interstate Bridge heralded new era of commerce HUSTln ClnmMn Passengers hustle on and off of the ferry at the foot of Washington Street in the early 1900s tried to cross on the ferry The boat made several trips as lines of cars waited In March 1912 300 Vancouver men led by civic leader Lloyd Dubois marched through the streets of Portland each wearing a tall black hat emblazoned with the words Highway Dubois dared Portlanders to match his 2500 and get a bridge survey started Finally construction started in March 1915 The original span and its approaches cost fl75 million It coat 5 cents a car to cross the bridge The toll stayed until Jan 1 1929 A street car crossed the bridge between Vancouver and Portland from the time the bridge was built until 1940 Asphalt was poured over the tracks in 1940 although portions of the track still were visible in the 1950s said Jim Wyzard bridge superintendent He Mid trades still are under the pavement on parts of the bridge Discussion of a second span started in 1948 Finally 10 yean later the original span closed down for refurbishing while drivers used the new span The old span was given a humpback just as the new span had so bridge opening could be eliminated In 1959 The Columbian reported the bridge opened a total of 4255 times 710 of them during rush hour While it was open traffic was delayed for a total of 400 hours and 15 minutes In January I960 traffic began flowing on both the old and new spans With that blessing came a 20-cent toll for can to pay off the 145 million bond issue used to finance construction of the new span and reconstruction of the old one The toll was 40 cents for light trucks and 60 cents for heavy trucks and buses Russia has its 'Iron Curtain' Asia its 'Bamboo and Vancouver-Portland have a Toll Curtain' The Columbian said Jan 11 1960 Toll booths were on the south side of the bridge Driven pitched coins into metal nwt or got change from toll-takers The toll remained in effect until Nov 1 1966 "Of -all inventions the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted those inventions Web abridge distance have done most for the civilisation of our species Every improvement of the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as well as materially and not only facilitates the interchange of the various productions of art but tends to remove national and provincial antipathies and to bind together ail the branches of the great human Macaulay That weathered bronxed Inscription on a concrete pillar at the northbound entrance of the Interstate Bridge at Jantxen Beach has wiDuiood sun storm and the fumes of literally a hundred thousand passing cars a dayj Not many people notice it or probably even know it is there But the statement makes just as much sense now when the Interstate 205 Bridge opens as it did when the Interstate Bridge opened with fanfare in 1917 Iron Bands We Clasp was the banner headline in the Feb 14 1917 Columbian above a story about the opening of the bridge For the first time motorists could travel on the Pacific Highway from Canada to Mexico without having to get on a ferry" During opening-day ceremonies 40000 people jammed the 3500-foot-long single span to watch the ribbon-cutting Seven hundred cars lined Washington Street waiting to cross Today's northbound span is the original bridge although it was altered from 1958-60 to include the humpback The southbound span opened in 1958 The interstate Bridge had been a dream ever since people started settling in Vancouver' But it was not until 1912 that plans were drawn up for a bridge across the Columbia River At that time going from shore to shore meant boarding a ferry On June 30 1905 Clark County Day at Portland's Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition 2000 people WTTH IRON BANDS WE CLASP HANDS Great Interstate Bridge Joins Two States Today Brief History of Events That SsSISSl rr Have Led to the Building of SfSSS the Structure tSr-srra Recently the bridge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places It is one of 60 bridges in Washington to receive the honor this year The average daily traffic count over the bridge is 103700 vehicles this year In 1953 when highway officials started keeping track the daily count was 29800 The count was 33800 in 1957 declining to 33000 in 1960 after the toll went on in January of that year In 1967 the first full year after the toll was taken off 56800 vehicles crossed the bridge a day 11000 a day more than the previous year The average daily count has increased by 25900 in the Last 10 years Another pillar at the entrance of the southbound span bears this inscription: "Therefore when we build let us think that we build forever Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone Let it be sun work as our descendants will thank us for and let us think as we lay state on stone that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them and that men will say as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them This our fathers did for us' Buskin Many Mm and Many Ewnlt Hiv Helped to Mike the Bndfe Complete and a Puhlc Utility of Today 'ZZZ2SZ! of Lawmaker wid Citumi Make Bndfr Siam a CartamMy FUSfta CatanMan Cars line up at the Hayden Island toll booths to pay 20-cent fare in the early- to mid-1960s The bridge was THE news on Feb 14 1917 the day of the bridge opening Contention swirls through 1-205 's lengthy history The effort wu like a pack of hounds barking at a foz from behind a chain-link fence To uy that we were unsuccessful would he a monumental said Jim Fowlin' owner of a local public relations firm worked our an off and accomplished nothing" The bridge's problems were solved without the of Bridge Now Fowler indicated Fowler a onetime business column writer for The Columbian recalled one piece that said that the bridge would rin That he quipped "wal lutely An ironic footnote to the Bridge Now campaign appeared in the form of November letter from a Washougal bank tP Schwary It reminded him that a dusty Bridge Now account still wu gathering interest must be a couple hundred dollars he Hid have to have a party" Because about three-fourths of the bridge is in Oregon (the state line cuts through the navigation channel which is near the Washington shore) that state has responsibility for most of the bridge work An agreement covering design and construction wu signed by Oregon and Washington in late 1969 In contrast to the stumbling that preceded the start of bridge construction the work has seemed smooth A ground-breaking was held Aug 23 1977 During the ceremony Glenn Jackson the late namesake turned to a contracting official and Hid you can speed the thing up Art (Riedel of Riedel Internationa) I think the traveling public will be very Engineers who have worked with the project generally display unabashed pride is the 11750-foot-long bridge wouldn't it (Wednesday's opening ceremony) for tig world" uid Klaboe been too many years of my lfe involved in that Hardt uid he might be a little callous about the graceful spans saw the bridge start from nothing and I tend to think ill jut another he uid without a doubt the people who have seen it are just amazed at its size It is a nice-lookirij Engineer Olson Hid he probably will be right here at this (in Salem) when the bridge opens But he remaiiS impressed by the 1-205 undertaking a big turkey a real amazing he uid pulled the feathers oQ it and got to work and on Dec 15 itjj gonna By THOMAS RYU Thu Columbian Back in the days when automobiles had tailfins doors that shut with a solid thunk and few plastic parts plans for the Interstate 205 Bridge were in their infancy But it was not the idea of some highway engineer who ut up in bed one night shouted and set about sketching construction details on Kleenex Nor wu it a blue-ribbofl panel of cigar-smoking businessmen who concluded that a second Columbia River crossing would be crucial in this area by 1982 Early discussion of the project surfaced during planning for the freeway system in the 1950s My Oregon highway engineers many of whose careers were born grew old and ended while the bridge and freeway were designed and built Seeking the history in the words of one kind of like asking someone to tell you about World War There was no bloodshed but at times it appeared the citizenry would sooner take up weapdbs than allow bulldozers to start work Court suits heated public hearings even a city that incorporated to fight the freeway all were skirmishes along the way Those and othetntelays including the writing of an environmental impact statement and redesigning to accommodate a bike path helped delay construction by at least five years Those problems not cost overruns seen in government military coo tracts boosted the bridge's price tag from $60 million in the early 1970s to approximately 175 million- Even a strongly opposed propoul to Ttwid a Portland International Airport runway threw some und in the 1-205 transmission As its name implies the bridge is part of the interstate freeway system conceived in the 1950s largely to provide the country with a modem high-speed highway network for defense Planning for the system began in 1955 Fred Klaboe former director of Department of Transportation Mid that federal guidelines called for one freeway through major cities plus a circumferential route tor the largest cities The concept always was that it (1-205) would go around he Hid problem was where to put Adrian Olson preliminary design engineer for the Oregon department Hid Interstate 5 got aS the initial attention scrambled around and Hid this is where it (1-205) should go but nobody was really interested in those V' i -T -f a WnlWCSinSan Starting point: Supports for the section of the bridge crossing state Highway 14 begin to rise east end Plans then called for the bridge's south end to touch down on part of the fill The port dropped expansion plan in 1973 With opponents' clamor still ringing in their ears engineers in 1972 were treated to a different kind of noise Clark County residents led by Camas businessman Dick Schwary began demanding the start of construction Schwary and others formed Bridge Now a loose coalition that sold bumper stickers (Bridge Now they read) and collected signatures on a petition urging of obstacles in the way of completion of this vital link between Oregon and he Hid the 1960s we got serious about building other parts of the Opponents got equally serious about undoing plans called it the Laurelhurst Freeway and the people in that area (along Portland's 39th Avenue) quickly came Hid Ed Hardt metro (Portland) region engineer for the transportation department we went to Lake Oswego and the city council told us to pack up and go The route through Lake Oswego would have put the freeway west of where it is now It would have traveled along the Portland International Airport's west end touching down on the Vancouver side somewhere between the Blandford Drive and Andresen Road Initial plans called for starting bridge construction in the early 1970s But 1971 then 1972 came and there still were arguments with Maywood Park residents who had incorporated to fight the freeway While that suit wu being settled (the courts eventually ruled against the city which is near Rocky Butte) a retroactive federal law prompted writing of an environmental impact statement and an 18-month delay -beginning in 1971 Hid Klaboe About that time the Port of Portland wanted to expand an airport runway onto fill dumped in the Columbia River at the field's Ml.