HISTORIC HIGHWAY BRIDGES OF OREGON

SIGNIFICANT BRIDGE DESIGNERS

Several internationally prominent engineers have designed bridges in Oregon. Short sketches about six of these designers are below. Charles Purcell and Conde McCullough, state bridge engineers in Oregon, enjoyed reputations beyond the boundaries of the state. Ralph Modjeski, Gustav Lindenthal, David Steinman, and Joseph Strauss are luminaries in the history of bridge building in America.

Charles H. Purcell (1883-1951)

C. H. Purcell has the distinction of being the first state bridge engineer in Oregon, serving in that position from 1913-17.

Purcell was born at North Bend, Nebraska, in 1883. He received his early education there before going on to Stanford and the University of Nebraska, where he was awarded a B.S. in civil engineering in 1906. In the same year he began his professional career, serving as a resident engineer for the Union Pacific Railroad in Wyoming. During 1907-08, Purcell was a structural designer in Ely, Nevada, for the American Smelting and Refining Company. In 1909-10, he was an assistant chief engineer for the Ceno de Pasco Company, large South American copper producers, serving in New York and Peru. He returned to the Pacific Northwest in 1911 and worked for the Yuba Construction Company and the Washington Northern Railroad. In 1913, he joined the newly-formed Oregon State Highway Department.

In 1917, Purcell was appointed bridge engineer for the United States Bureau of Public Roads and in 1919 became district engineer for that bureau in Portland, Oregon. He served in that position until February 1927, when he became state highway engineer for the State of California. In 1932, because of his qualifications and notable professional record, Purcell was appointed member and secretary of the Hoover-Young Commission to locate the projected San Francisco Bay Bridge. In 1933 he was appointed chief engineer for the project. The $73,000,000 bridge was opened in November 1936 and was the largest suspension bridge in the world at that time. The Bay Bridge, with its overall 43,500-foot length, includes both suspension (West Bay Crossing) and steel cantilever (East Bay Crossing) spans.

Although the construction of the Bay Bridge tends to overshadow Purcell's other achievements, he is also famous for designing the Bixby Creek Bridge (sometimes called the Rainbow Bridge) on California's coast highway near Carmel. This classic arch span was built in 1931-33 in partnership with F.W. Panhorst. This reinforced concrete structure has unusually pure and graceful lines and is an outstanding example of Purcell's engineering abilities.

Purcell was a significant force in the design and construction of numerous bridges in Oregon during the period 1913-17 while he served as state bridge engineer. Along with his designers, K.R. Billner and L. W. Metzger, Purcell created many of the structures on the Columbia River Highway in the Columbia Gorge. (These structures are now listed on the National Register as the Columbia River Highway Historic District. They are also a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, as designated by the American Society of Civil Engineering.)

Conde B. McCullough (1887-1946)

Conde B. McCullough's long period of service with the State Highway Department as bridge engineer and assistant state highway engineer left a legacy of fine bridges in Oregon.

McCullough was born in Redfield, South Dakota, the son of a physician. He graduated with a B.S. in civil engineering from Iowa State College in 1910. After his graduation, his first engineering position was with the March Engineering Company, Des Moines, Iowa. From 1911 to 1916, he was employed by the Iowa State Highway Department, first as a designing engineer and then as assistant state highway engineer. During this time he designed his first bridges, the field in which he was later to achieve international recognition.

Upon moving to Oregon in 1916, McCullough joined the civil engineering department at Oregon State College (University) and was promoted to professor and head of the civil engineering department in 1918. He left teaching in 1919 to join the State Highway Department as state bridge engineer. After establishing himself at the Highway Department, McCullough also studied law at Willamette University, graduated with a Bachelor of Law degree in 1928, and was admitted to the Oregon State Bar in the same year. (He received an honorary doctorate degree in engineering from Oregon State College in 1934.) In 1932 he was appointed assistant state highway engineer and served in dual roles (also, state bridge engineer) until 1935. Between October 1935 through 1936, he was on a temporary leave, supervising the design and construction of bridges on the Inter-American Highway in Central America for the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads. He worked on the design and construction of bridges in Panama, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Costa Rica.

Upon returning in 1937 to the Oregon State Highway Department, he served as assistant state highway engineer and spent much of that time researching and writing technical reports and books. Three technical bulletins received national recognition: "The Economics of Highway Planning," "The Determination of Highway Systems Solvencies," and "An Analysis of the Highway Tax Structure in Oregon."

McCullough was also the author of several textbooks on structural subjects. McCullough coauthored a definitive textbook on the analysis and design of elastic arch bridges. Later, he became interested in suspension bridges and was coauthor of five technical booklets on that subject. With his son, John, he wrote a two-volume work entitled The Engineer at Law (1946). He worked for the highway department until his death in 1946.

His bridges were noted for their beauty and innovation. Among the best known are the steel arches over the Willamette River at Oregon City and Yaquina Bay at Newport, the concrete arches on the Oregon Coast Highway, and the steel cantilever over Coos Bay. The McLoughlin Bridge across the Clackamas River south of Portland on the Pacific Highway, a series of tied steel arches with concrete approaches, was built in 1933 and was rated by the American Institute of Steel Construction as the most beautiful steel bridge in its class that year.

Louis Pierce, in his article "Esthetics in Oregon Bridges—McCullough to Date" (1980), summarizes McCullough's significance:

McCullough was, and is, the outstanding bridge engineer in Oregon's history. In the technical sense, his research, writing, and engineering design were all first rate. His receptiveness to new ideas is evidenced by two examples that come to mind: the first tied concrete arch in America (the Wilson River Bridge, Tillamook County), and the first use of the Freyssinet method of precompression at the arch crown at Rogue River... The esthetic art of his engineering is witnessed by the beauty of the bridges that were built under his direction, and the acclaim that they have received ever since.

David Plowden, in Bridges: Spans of North America (1974), states that McCullough's best examples, representing perhaps the most interesting concentration of concrete bridges in America, are found on the Oregon Coast Highway on the Oregon Coast.

The art of McCullough's bridge engineering culminated in 1936 when five major bridges, all incorporating the arch form and all crossing tidal estuaries and rivers on the Pacific Ocean, were constructed on the Oregon Coast Highway. The total cost of $5,400,000 was financed through a loan and grant agreement with the federal Public Works Administration. This was by far the largest single undertaking by the bridge department up to that time and resulted in a series of magnificent structures that complement the great natural beauty of the Oregon coastline. He was honored posthumously in 1947 when the Coos Bay Bridge was renamed and dedicated the McCullough Memorial Bridge.

Many of McCullough's bridges are eligible for or have been listed on the National Register. The Rogue River (Gold Beach) Bridge was designated a Historic National Civil Engineering Landmark in 1982 by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Ralph Modjeski (1861-1940)

David Plowden states that probably no man produced more characteristically American bridges than Ralph Modjeski. His career encompassed two eras of bridge design, beginning in the age of the steel truss and the railway and continuing into the heyday of the suspension bridge. Modjeski was a principal bridge engineer for the railroads and cities of America. Mod jeski is credited with designing both railroad and highway bridges in Oregon.

Modjeski was born in Krakow, Poland, and traveled to the United States in 1878. Modjeski entered the Ecole des Points and Chaussees in Paris, and in 1885, after graduating at the head of his class, returned to America. After working on various assignments, Modjeski opened his own office in Chicago, launching what was to become one of the most diversified careers in all of bridge engineering. As chief engineer, he was in charge of the construction or the rebuilding of thirty of America's major bridges, four of which held records and have attained the status of classics. Although not in the latter category, the work that at one stroke elevated Modjeski to the front ranks of his profession was the building of the Thebes Bridge (1904) over the Mississippi at Thebes, Illinois. Some of Modjeski's other major bridges outside Oregon include the McKinley Bridge (1902-10) in St. Louis; the Ohio River Bridge of the Burlington Northern Railroad at Metropolis, Illinois (1914-1917); the Philadelphia-Camden Bridge (also known as Ben Franklin Bridge), Delaware River, (1922-26); and the Huey P. Long Bridge in New Orleans, (1933-36).

In Oregon, Modjeski is associated with the Willamette River (Broadway) Bridge, a steel truss with Rall-type double bascule (1913). He is also responsible for the Spokane, Portland, and Seattle (now Burlington-Northern) railroad and highway structures in North Portland, completed in 1908-09. The steel braced-spandrel arch which Modjeski designed for the Oregon Trunk Railroad was built in 1911 across the Crooked River canyon in Central Oregon and is located just downstream from C.B. McCullough's 1926 Crooked River (High) Bridge.

Gustav Lindenthal (1850-1935)

Lindenthal was born in Brunn, Austria (Czechoslovakia). He received his technical training at the Politechnicum College in Dresden and sailed for the United States in 1874. The country was then in the midst of a depression, and the only job he could get was as a stoneman on the construction of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. As economic conditions improved, Lindenthal became a designer for the Keystone Bridge Company in Pittsburgh, and in 1878 was offered the post of bridge engineer for the Atlantic-Great Western Railroad in Cleveland. Three years later he returned to Pittsburgh, and shortly after setting up a private practice there, secured the contract for the Smithfield Street Bridge. This large and successful lenticular truss bridge across the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh took the place of a suspension bridge built in 1845 by John A. Roebling. Lindenthal's major claims to fame are three bridges on the East River in New York—Blackwell's Island or Queensboro Bridge (1908), steel cantilever truss; Manhattan Bridge (1908), suspension; and the Hell Gate Arch (1917). The latter bridge was a two-hinged braced spandrel-arch, and is still the world's highest arch bridge.

Before the Hell Gate Arch was opened, Lindenthal was already at work on a structure that was to equal Hell Gate in every respect—the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad's Sciotoville Bridge (1914), a continuous truss across the Ohio River near Portsmouth, Ohio. Lindenthal's decision to select this bridge form represented a much more daring solution than the one adopted at the East River.

His last commission came from the City of Portland for a series of bridges across the Willamette River. The Sellwood and Ross Island bridges were completed in 1925 and 1926, respectively, when Lindenthal was in his mid-70s. Lindenthal also took over the final design and construction of the Burnside Bridge (1926).

David B. Steinman (1886-1960)

David Steinman was born in New York City and attended the City College of New York and Columbia University. He received a doctorate from Columbia in 1911. He was professor of civil engineering at the University of Idaho and professor of civil and mechanical engineering at the City College of New York.

Steinman's bridge-building career began as an assistant to Gustav Lindenthal between 1914 and 1917, assisting on the Hell Gate Arch Bridge (1917) and the Sciotoville Bridge (1914). From the 1930s onward, Steinman, along with Othmar H. Amman (later the designer of the George Washington and Verrazano-Narrows bridges in New York City), dominated the American bridge-building scene. Steinman was a prolific builder, with many of his structures being record-breaking suspension bridges. Famous bridges by Steinman include the Henry Hudson Bridge (1936), the longest hingeless arch and the longest plate girder arch span in the world; the Thousand Islands International Bridge (1938) over the St. Lawrence River; the Carquinez Strait Bridge (1927), California; and Mackinac Strait Bridge, Mackinaw City-St. Ignace, Michigan (1957), steel suspension, 3,800 feet. Steinman also designed or acted as consulting engineer on several bridges outside the United States.

Steinman's contribution to Oregon is the St. John's suspension bridge across the Willamette River in North Portland, completed in 1931. This is Steinman's only constructed design in Oregon, although he did work on designs between 1929 and 1935 for the Astoria Bridge across the Columbia River.

He authored The Builders of the Bridge (1945), several standard works on bridge design and construction, and numerous technical and interpretive articles.

Joseph B. Strauss (1870-1938)

Joseph Strauss' place in engineering history became solidly fixed in 1937 with the completion of the Golden Gate Suspension Bridge at San Francisco. He was the chief engineer and gained world fame for what David Plowden calls "one of the world's greatest engineering achievements, an outstanding masterpiece of modern American bridge design."

Strauss graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1882, where for his thesis he designed a span over the Bering Straits between Alaska and Russia. Two years later he started his own engineering firm. Prior to his association with the Golden Gate, his name was best known as a designer of bascule bridges. (The Burnside Bridge across the Willamette River in Portland includes a bascule system designed by Strauss.) His most famous bascule span is the Arlington Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C.

Strauss also completed several large steel cantilever bridges. The Lewis and Clark Bridge (1930) across the Columbia River, with its 1,200-foot main span, was the longest cantilever span in the United States when completed. Plowden considers the bridge one of the most beautiful of all cantilevers.

Strauss completed bridges in Europe, Russia, Japan, Egypt, China, and South America. In total, he designed nearly four hundred bridges.

BRIDGE CONTRACTORS

Many of the bridge contractors active in Oregon from the turn of the century to the late 1930s are listed below. The names of bridge contractors are unknown for many of the bridges constructed during this period. This list indicates the contractors associated with the pre-1941 bridges. The names were obtained primarily from bridge nameplates, bridge plans and contracts, and articles in engineering journals and other publications, including the Oregon State Highway Commission's biennial reports.