By: Jayeson Vance, ARM Volunteer
The overpass above the railroad depot in Albany cost about $350K to build in 1939. Today the same job would require an investment of $5.5 Million dollars. At the age of 86 this overpass or viaduct is still heavily used by tons of heavy trucks and other vehicles and remains apparently very safe.
The esteemed local journalist Hasso Herring dug into this interesting story back in 2014 and found out from the Oregon Highway engineers and Oregon Department of Transportation spokesperson Rick Little, that it was officially finished December 16, 1939 just in time for the prewar Christmas Holidays.
Mountain States Construction of Eugene along with a subcontractor built the structure in less than one year, which is no doubt a rather short length of time by today’s often more complex standards. Roy Houck of Salem was the subcontractor who built the grading and berms to support the viaduct. Houck also handled construction of the bridge approaches we still use today as enter or exit or cross over 4 railroad tracks near Albany’s Amtrak Station.
Why all of this effort I wondered? Well, it turns out that in the days before 1939, Pacific Highway 99E wound its way into town from the south on Elm Street, thence to First Street, next to Main Street and finally out to the east on what’s now Salem Avenue. For obvious reasons, the new Pacific Boulevard would provide a streamlined way to route heavy traffic efficiently.
The result of this rather monumental effort was the closure of 11 railroad crossings and the creation of 6 new crossings. To get soil dense enough to support this massive amount of concrete required excavating near the East Albany Cemetery.
Engineering drawings from 1939 showed a “proposed dam” to be built near the excavation site. The dam was eventually finished and resulted in what we today know as Waverly Lake.
Large entities like the Southern Pacific Railroad, Oregon Department of Transportation and the U.S. Bureau of Roads were major players in this effort to give Albany a better connection with the rest of the state and the entire west coast of the United States.
