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Reviews
SPANNING WASHINGTON: HISTORIC HIGHWAY BRIDGES OF THE EVERGREEN STATE
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by Craig Holstine and Richard Hobbs
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Washington State University Press, Pullman, 2005.
Illustrations, photos, maps, notes, bibliography, index.
280 pages. $24.95 paper. |
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| Historians Craig Holstine and Richard Hobbs have provided an excellent overview of Washington's historic bridges in Spanning Washington: Historic Highway Bridges of the Evergreen State. Like other states' bridge books, this one relies on the documentations gathered in the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) bridge program. |
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A book like this must itself be somewhat analogous to a highway bridge. Certainly there is room for imagination, but utility and reliability need to prevail. The authors satisfy the practical need by devoting Part II of their book to a catalogue of the premier historic bridges in each of six geographical areas of the state. Each geographical area gets a map showing major highways and the locations of historic highway bridges. Each bridge gets at least one photo and a few paragraphs detailing its dates, designer, builder, and current status. There are also anecdotes about the bridges' histories, along with historic photos and engineering drawings. Contemporary accounts of the bridges' construction, when available, add to the narrative. |
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This catalog of bridges in Part II should satisfy the pontophiles and serve general readers as a reference, perhaps when they visit Washington. But Part I, the first eighty-three pages of the book, has a different objective. Here, the authors present short essays on five separate topics relating to Washington's historic bridges. At the risk of alienating my pontophile friends, let me say that this is the more interesting part of the book, and certainly the more imaginative. |
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The first of these five essays is a brief introduction to bridge structure and design. The authors regale us with all the major types of bridges and many of the pleasing variations. Here are the familiar triangles of Howe, Parker, Pratt, and Warren trusses as well as the less familiar shapes of cantilever deck-trusses, bascules, and lift spans. The point of this introduction is that bridge designers work within an engineering grammar that they can interpret but not violate. The genius of a truly great bridge designer such as David Steinman or Conde McCullough is matching the engineering with the landscape and then doing the engineering in a unique way. |
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The second topic is a discussion of bridge building in Washington, with some insights into the connection between bridges and Washington's progress in the twentieth century. Since the northwest quarter of Washington — where most of the people live — is the wet part of the state, bridges or the lack of bridges often shaped Washington's history. Only in New England have Americans had as much need to get across or around such a collection of rivers, sounds, bays, canals, and the like. |
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The next topic is related — Washington's bridges that failed. Of course, no one can think about Washington bridges without thinking about Tacoma Narrows. Holstine and Hobbs show us that many other bridges have failed in the Evergreen State, albeit less spectacularly. Bridges have failed because of poor engineering, floods, fires, rot, overloaded log trucks, bad weather, and bad luck. "Some river crossings seem to have been cursed" (p. 54), and Washington's floating bridges (if they are bridges at all) are especially prone to disaster. We learn that two of the four floating bridges have sunk. |
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The authors then turn to a discussion of bridges that have been lost not to natural forces but to progress. Bridge preservation is obviously close to the authors' hearts, but they show us that it is a complicated business. Preserving landmark bridges such as Spokane's Monroe Street Bridge is not an issue. But what of the 1922 Pasco-Kennewick bridge after the innovative cable-stayed Ed Hendler Bridge was built beside it? The 1922 bridge was a historic span across the Columbia and an attractive piece of engineering. Despite a strong local movement to preserve it, the 1922 bridge came down, no longer needed and the victim of what Holstine and Hobbs call "elegance envy" (p. 71). |
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The final discussion in Part I is worth the price of the book. Here is a set of biographies of Washington's bridge designers. The authors call these men (with a nod to Henry Petrovsky) the "Designers of Dreams." For the most part, the men responsible for Washington's bridges are not familiar names. Their practices were confined to Washington, but they had a lot to do and they did it well. Among these, of course, is Clark Eldridge, the designer of "Galloping Gertie." After the disaster in 1940, Eldridge, presumably a broken man, left his home in Washington and took a job with contractors working on a defense project in Guam.
Captured and imprisoned by the Japanese for the remainder of the war (three years and nine months) Eldridge assumed he had outdistanced his association with "Galloping Gertie." One day ... a Japanese officer walked up and said simply, "Tacoma bridge" (p. 86).
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The book is a nice publication with excellent photographs and very useful plans and drawings. Eric DeLony, the dean of American bridge historians, has contributed an essay at the end of the book summing up Washington's best bridges. There is a glossary of bridge terms and a thoughtful bibliography to round out this delightful book. |
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| Ward Tonsfeldt
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| Bend, Oregon |
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