Jun. 30, 2010 - Issue #767: The Bestest of Edmonton 2010
Bestest bridge
Such great heights: High Level Bridge a longtime Edmonton icon
The High Level Bridge serves double duty as an iconic Edmonton landmark and one of the most impressive feats of engineering found in the city. 777 metres long, 47 metres tall and held together with 1.4 million rivets, the bridge stands today as strong as ever.Canadian Pacific Railway began construction of the bridge in 1910 to connect its main rail line—running west through Calgary with a branch line up to Strathcona—with the burgeoning Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk railways. CPR hoped to avoid the considerable cost of building the bridge through the development of Strathcona, which had been created by the rail company on the south bank of the North Saskatchewan in 1891. CPR hoped that Strathcona would outgrow Edmonton, says Edmonton Historical Board Chair Tim Marriott, but the other two rail lines kept the city from shrinking. Soon the CPR had an economic interest in connecting the two settlements."Eventually, it was to the CPR's advantage to connect up with those other two lines," he says. "You could say that the CPR had to get on the train with everybody else."And so its engineers set to work with horses, steam shovels and a whole lot of sweat. They built the bridge high above the river because of the narrow, steep character of the surrounding valley, says Marriott. "The science was there, they knew what to do," he says. "There was a lot of human power."
After three years, three million dollars and the death of two construction workers, the bridge opened to automobile, streetcar, locomotive and pedestrian traffic. The trains would run across the bridge's top deck, shaking the whole construct."It was quite a remarkable structure," says bridge technologist Tom Hubbard. "At that time it became the fourth largest bridge in Canada." He calls the bridge "over-designed" and says that it's as strong as any of the more modern bridges in the city.
That a bridge built nearly a century ago compares favourably with more recent ones doesn't necessarily mean that modern bridge-builders are lazy, though. Marriott says the era was one of amazing industrial accomplishments."It was the great age of engineers," he says. "Bridges themselves, they were sort of the physical symbol of the great Victorian age, the expansion, the economic opening up of former wilderness areas."
Marriott thinks the bridge, along with the Legislature building, also completed in 1913, provide definitive visual imagery for the city. "For most Edmontonians, the High Level Bridge and the Legislature, the two of them together, are that sort-of visual shorthand," he says. "That's how they think of Edmonton."
And unlike the Walterdale Bridge, slated for replacement in 2013, the High Level won't be going anywhere soon: Hubbard says that with the right maintenance, it could last indefinitely. The latest batch of upkeep was finished in 1995, and more will be required sometime around 2020.
The bridge "was definitely designed to last a hundred years," says Hubbard. "It has proven to do that." V vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus
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