Spring Canyon Trestle

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Big Trees Trestles: Spring Canyon

In the previous post I highlighted the tightest turning trestle in the United States, the Indian Creek Trestle on the Roaring Camp & Big Trees Narrow Gauge Railroad. While this is impressive, the Spring Canyon Trestles are even more impressive.

The trestles includes a lower trestle and an upper trestle. The uphill tracks passed under the upper trestle on the lower trestle, corkscrewed around and then crossing over the lower on the upper. The upper trestle railbed was 80 feet off the ground.

The two trestles were built in 1966 and the first train of passengers crossed the trestles in the same year.

50 years ago, on June 27, 1976, at approximately 6:30 PM, the trestles went up in flames. The work of ten years before was a total loss.

Locals reported hearing a loud explosion shortly before the fire started. It was suspected that the cause was arson, either from an environmentalist destroying the trestles to prevent logging (the railroad was a tourist attraction and never a logging operation) or a disgruntled employee. Neither theory has been proven and fire of 1976 is shrouded in mystery.

The ghosts of the past still remain at Roaring Camp in the charred black beams of the Spring Valley Trestles.

And I was here to see them and sketch the standing remains of the Spring Canyon Trestles.

The remains of the high or upper trestle. 50 years later and the redwood forest is slowly reclaiming the trestle.
The rusted rails leading to the lower trestle. This is where trains coming from Roaring Camp entered the trestle complex.
A young redwood stands in the middle of the railbed at the other end of the lower trestle as it passes under the upper trestle.

The Roaring Camp’s founder and owner Norman Clark wanted to rebuild the trestle but the insurance company would not allow another wooden trestle to be built, instead they preferred steel but this did not fit in with Clark’s vision for historical accuracy for a logging railroad.

My field sketch of the upper and end of the lower trestle.

Instead of rebuilding the two trestles (which would also be expensive) a fix was planned and engineered to take the railroad up and out of Spring Canyon without the trestles.

The first section of the switchback heading up the hill (left track) at the steepest grade in any narrow gauge railroad (9.5%). The train comes up the hill on the center track and after passing the switch, backs up the steep grade. On the far right the rusted track the led to the lower trestle can be seen.

A series of switchbacks was constructed in the space of just four months and these switchbacks are still in use 50 years later.

No. 1 pulls past the switch and waits for the conductor to flip the switch so the train can back up the 9.5% grade on the first leg of the switchback. This is the most work the Dixiana will encounter on the way to Bear Mountain.
No. 1 heading out of the switchbacks on her way to Bear Mountain. The engineer lays on the whistle to blow the grade crossing at the fire road.