1914-1976 Lost/NP #4 Bridge over Salmon Bay in Seattle, WA

(Archived Bridge Hunter; Satellite, they filled in the trestle to make a dock.)

Cropped from a 1950 photo, License: Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)

Kurt Einar Armbruster posted
Casey Jones! In 1956 retired Seattle theatrical promoter Carol Cornish and a group of friends thought it would be cool to take people on ‘old-time’ train rides with steam power. So they started Casey Jones Excursions and hit a home run. At first steam-hauled, the chartered Northern Pacific trains became a local institution with their leisurely rambles, often on freight-only branch lines. On Sunday, April 28, 1957, young Seattle railfan Bil Baker snaps Ten-wheeler 1372 heading the third Casey Jones train over the Salmon Bay drawbridge en route to Snoqualmie (a consarned diesel pushing on the rear). And in the second-to-last open-window, red-plush, heavyweight coach, Fred Armbruster, Kurt, Garnis, and Norman take it all in, their first and only trip behind steam locomotion—a day to remember!—Bill Baker photo, Pacific Northwest Railroad Archive

Peter Kim: This may be the first color photo I’ve seen of the NP drawbridge.

Kurt Einar Armbruster posted with the same comment

David Sprau: Thanks for posting. This was part of the original NP (Former Seattle Lake Shore and Eastern / Seattle International) main line from Seattle to Sumas, and I always felt it was neglected as far as photographic documentation goes. Just for the record the line started at Seattle Waterfront, later changed over to start at King St. station, ran via the tunnel to North Portal where it paralleled the GN double track to Interbay, then took off going behind GN roundhouse and onward to this bridge about a mile upstream from the GN bridge bearing same number (4). Then it continued thru U district to Kenmore, Bothell, Woodinville, Maltby, Snohomish, Hartford, Arlington, and Sedro Woolley until reaching Sumas. Totally different route than GN used to reach Canada border.

Evan Beck: This is an extremely rare photo of this bridge. For some reason, there's very few photos of it, especially in color. I believe it was dismantled in 1975? Up until recently, there was a small amount of the approach on the south side of the canal still in place, and was being used as a big carport where some vehicles were stored. Sadly, it was removed last year.

[Someone misidentified this as the Ballard Bridge and that caused quite a few comments about the counterweight problem on that bridge.]

Because of Evan's comment above, I saved a satellite image of the south approach.

Satellite

When I first looked at that photo, I thought it was the Ballard Bridge. But then I noticed the NP Monad on the counterweight. The Ballard Bridge was a GN bridge. So I dug deeper.

StreetSmartNaturalist
"A steel Strauss bascule bridge completed in 1914 as a “permanent and rapid acting type required by the war department,” it was taken down by dynamite on December 10, 1976."

MOHAI, ca. 1917

From the north, the GN came to Seattle along the west side while the NP came along the east side.

Unfortunately, the new USGS topo website identifies this as 1964 Seattle @ 62,500. Since the Lake Washington Ship Canal was completed in 1917, I knew this map was wrong. So I went back to the old software, and it identifies this as 1909 Seattle @ 62,500.

I was able to find some maps that correctly show the location of this bridge. When GN and NP merged in 1970 to form BN, these two routes became redundant. Obviously, BN choose to use the GN route.

1968 Shilshole Bay and North Seattle Quad @ 24,000

A history about NP and Seattle