Located within the Peter Skene Ogden State Park and Wayside are a number of interpretive displays and plaques highlighting the Crooked River (High) Bridge, its replacement bridge, dedicated as the Rex Barber Veterans Memorial Bridge in 2003, and this railroad bridge. There is an interpretive display that highlights this FIRST structure which reads:
The Oregon Trunk Railroad Bridge
The Oregon Trunk Railway Bridge, constructed in 1911, was the first structure to cross this spectacular gorge. Prior to construction, the only crossing of the Crooked Rived was about a mile upstream, where the canyon's sheer basalt wall begin tapering gradually into the surrounding landscape.
In the early 1900s, railroad tycoons James J. Hill of the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway (SP&S) and Edward Harriman of the Union Pacific began a fierce battle for the rights to open central Oregon to rail traffic. This battle, one of the greatest in railroad history, played out in the courts, where the SP&S triumphed. IN the field, however, where night raids, dynamite, gunfire, and fistfights were common, neither railroad triumphed. The Oregon Trunk Railway, a subsidiary of the SP&S, ran from Celilo Falls on the Columbia River to Bend - James Hill was on hand in Bend on October 5, 1911 to drive a "Golden Spike" celebrating the line's official opening.
Bridge constructions began in November 1910 and the first work train crossed on September 17, 1911. In their haste to open the bridge and push toward Bend, workers installed only 50% of the bridge's required rivets - the remaining 21,500 rivets were driven over the following five weeks while trains crossed overhead.
The bridge spans 460 feet, perched on its abutments 320 feet above the river. It is among the nation's highest railway bridges. Designed by Ralph Modjeski, a noted civil engineer, the bridge is constructed to support two 188.5-ton locomotives pulling loads of 5,000 lbs per linear foot of track.
There would be two bridges constructed over this gorge after this railroad bridge, a concrete arch bridge in 1926 and another concrete arch bridge in 2000.