The Duhamel Trestle Bridge - Duhamel, Alberta
Posted by: 
wildwoodke
N 52° 56.776 W 112° 57.800
12U E 368083 N 5868097
Lasting 14 years, the Duhamel Trestle Bridge, spanned the Battle River Valley at a height of 120ft and a length of over 4000ft. The hamlet moved to allow for constructon of the railway, a highly desired economic opporutunity for Duhamel, Alberta.
Waymark Code: WMEFE5
Location: Alberta, Canada
Date Posted: 05/21/2012
Views: 5
Text from the plaque:
"The Duhamel Trestle Bridge
Railway fever was a common ailment in Alberta in the first part of the twentieth century. The only cure for the fevers and chills brought on by rumours that a railway line was soon to be built through your community was if one actually was!
For the inhabitants of the tiny hamlet of Duhamel, their cure came in 1909 when the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway announced it would build a bridge across the Battle River near here. When it became clear the bridge was scheduled to meet the south side of the river bank right on the site of the hamlet, the inhabitants happily established a new town further south.
In the fall of 1909, a magnificent wooden trestle bridge began to creep across the valley. Almost 4000 feet long and 120 feet high, it arced in a great sweep from river bank to river bank. At times, 120 men were working on the bridge. Others, some of them farmers using their horses and wagons, hauled the raw timbers from where the railway deposited them in Camrose to the bridge site to be cut to size. Still others hauled the cut timbers out into the valley to the construction site.
The bridge stood only 14 years before it fell victim to railway consolidation. The great structure was dismantled, its huge timbers salvaged for building and repairing other bridges. The river valley near Duhamel again stood quiet, no longer a host to the thundering racket of the iron horse."