1889+1892+1910,2005 Monroe Street Bridges and Lower Falls Dam in Spokane, WA

Bridge: (Bridge Hunter broke Mar 22, 2023; Historic Bridges; 3D Satellite, 532 photos) 

Falls: (3D Satellite, 313 photos)

Sunset Bridge is the other historical concrete arch bridge in Spokane.

Trail View, Oct 2015

Trail View, Oct 2015

Bridges Now and Then posted
"The second Monroe Street Bridge (Spokane, Washington) was a steel structure built 1892. It is pictured here after a 100-foot section collapsed in 1910 during the construction of our current concrete version. A city engineer at the time said a cyclonic wind caused the collapse, but it was never determined whether wind, added weight of steel reinforcement or an earth slide was the actual cause." (Spokesman-Review)
[DiscoveryRobot has a photo of the second bridge. It is much spindlier than the truss we see here. HistoryLink states: "on July 21, 1910, a severe windstorm destroyed the temporary wooden falsework, adding cost and delay." But this photo doesn't look like falsework. So I'm confused.]

"The second bridge developed a vibration and eventually collapsed after a mud slide on its south side. In 1907 when the Ringling Brothers Circus came to town, the elephants refused to cross the bridge apparently sensing something was wrong." [DiscoveryRobots]

"In 1909 Spokane City Engineer John Chester Ralston completed the design and specifications for the replacement bridge. The new bridge was a 281-foot [86m] monolithic concrete span with main piers met by graceful arches at either end. Its continued location at Monroe Street required crossing a gorge 140 feet [43m] deep and 1,500 [457m] wide, no easy task." [HistoryLink]

Construction Photo via HistoricBridges, Source: Washington State Archives
"Historically, this bridge was also significant for very briefly holding the record for largest concrete arch span in the United States."

 

Photo via HistoricBridges, Source: Washington State Archives
[Union Pacific built their bridge across the street bridge. "Not until 1973, in preparation for Spokane’s environmental world’s fair, Expo ’74, was it removed." [HistoryLink]]

In 2005, when they rebuilt the bridge that was above the arches and piers, they accurately reproduced the buffalo skulls on the wagon-shaped lookout pavilions. [HistoricBridges, HistoryLink has some details about the ornamentation.]

Street View, Jul 2017

The trail view near the top of these notes caught a low river flow.

 Cynthia ReaLynch (Cindy Rea), Jun 2022
2:06 video @ 0.00

Cynthia ReaLynch (Cindy Rea), Jun 2022
2:06 video @ 1:58

Another heavy flow in June.

Anitha Kapu, Jun 2023

2022 was a wet year.

Neelam Choudhary, May 2022

Another heavy flow. This one was in 2018.

spokesman
The first bridge was opened in 1889 and carried early electric street cars. It was a wooden bridge, and it burned a year later.

In fact, the trail view must have caught one of the lowest flows of the river.

Street View, Sep 2018

This is a Francis turbine. "Washington Water Power built its first hydroelectric generating facility on Monroe Street in 1890 and has been producing power from this location ever since. Located at the heart of downtown Spokane, the dam was instrumental in providing electric lighting for Spokane’s streets and businesses as opposed to lighting via candles and oil lamps. The dam was rebuilt just before the 1974 World’s Fair, and a new underground powerhouse was added in 1992, replacing the vintage 1900-era turbines and generators with a modern generating unit that produced twice the electrical power using the same amount of water flow. WWP also donated 5 acres for expos that later became part of the Spokane Riverfront development." [SpokaneHistorical]

MaDi, Aug 2021, cropped