(click to enlarge photos)
This I recognize. It is Lyons Ferry on the Snake River when there was still a ferry – the longest-lived and last of the four principal Snake River Ferries in Washington. The salvaged Vantage Bridge replaced the Lyons Ferry – a cable ferry – in 1969 as waters backed-up behind the then new Lower Monumental Dam. I am allowed a mark on my Washington Belt for having as a child crossed the snake on this Lyons Ferry., (You can study these changes in Building Washington, a book that is included on this blog as a pdg file. Go to the History Books button, open it, and then click on “Building Washington.” It is a big book so on this supe’d-up MAC it required about four minutes to open. It may take less time. My computer is supered but it is also four years old. That’s a minute a year.) This view looks north. Now much of the mid-ground is flooded with the joined waters of the Snake and Palouse Rivers and the old Vantage Bridge spans the river heading for a landing on the north or far bank about a quarter of a mile to the east (right) of the famous railroad bridge seen here on the left.
Jean here. Paul, on my trip across the state for our book Washington Then and Now, I visited the old Vantage bridge. I took a few photos from above as well as those we used in the book. The shapes of the hills quite obviously reflect those in Horace’s photo. Interestingly, in the first Now photo, the railway bridge seems to be in the same location as before the waters rose, although completely rebuilt.
One more image – a panorama stitched together from three photos looking across at the state park and beyond:
I don’t know where to start. I was born in Ellensburg Wa. and went to Vantage with my parents often. We played on the old sand dunes and swam in the pools of water there. I remember the low on the face of the cliffs a rock formation that looked like a skeleton face. When they flooded it everything was gone. Could you direct me where i might find old pictures of Vantage before it was flooded?Thank you, Sue Anderson
Sue
There is another and later “Our Daily Sykes #346” on the blog dorpatsherrardlomont that shows more – a few – early views of Vantage around the bridge there. Otherwise I’d think a Google search would show up some more.
Paul