(click to enlarge photos)
Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 28, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Dec. 1, 2024
After 115 years, Wenatchee names the first cross-Columbia bridge
By Jean Sherrard
Sometimes a rose by another name does smell sweeter, suggests Teri St. Jean, a retired elementary school teacher from Wenatchee. An amateur historian and preservationist, she has devoted considerable time and effort to restoring historic homes. She’s also served on local landmark boards.
Like many Wenatchee-ites, St. Jean has enjoyed strolling across the 1908 pipeline bridge — the first to cross the Columbia River south of the Canadian border. But she’s lamented that it bore no official name.
“It was just called the Pedestrian Bridge,” she says, “or the Black Bridge, or the Old Bridge.”
St. Jean believed that the graceful, cantilevered structure, beloved by locals, might be even more appreciated if it bore a name reflecting its storied past.
With a group of like-minded history buffs, she turned
for advice to Waylon Marshall, manager of the Wenatchee Reclamation District and responsible for maintenance and upkeep of the span.
Perhaps the city’s iconic bridge could be named after its creator? Marshall enthusiastically agreed.
Thus, 115 years after it first opened to traffic, the W.T. Clark Pipeline Bridge was finally christened on Oct. 4, 2023.
Originally from Ohio, William T. Clark arrived in Eastern Washington in 1893 and instantly understood the landscape and its limitations. The fertile soil, suitable for all manner of crops, was constrained only by lack of water.
After cutting his teeth on irrigation canals in the Yakima Valley, “Artesian” Clark (his popular nickname) spied opportunities further north.
The Highline Canal, his most extensive project, tapped the Wenatchee River at Dryden, running 16 miles through rough terrain southeast to Wenatchee. The gravity-powered canal opened in 1903, providing water to 7,000 acres and triggering a population and property boom. Parcels selling for less than $25 per acre climbed to $400 and more.
Just east, across the Columbia River, parched
scrubland stood tantalizingly close but mostly unirrigated. Clark’s solution: a bridge that could carry not only a pipeline extending the canal but also vehicle traffic.
He enlisted investors including James J. Hill, director of the Great Northern Railroad, and Seattle business leader Thomas Burke, both eager to further expand — and profit from — arable land.
Completed in 1908, the combined highway and pipeline bridge reclaimed 4,000 acres of East Wenatchee, luring another 6,000 settlers within months.
“The pipeline opened up development in Douglas County,” Marshall says, “and still serves water six dry months of the year, 24 hours a day, at 24,000 gallons per minute.”
Now part of Wenatchee’s 11-mile Apple Capital Loop trail, the W.T Clark Pipeline Bridge adds a name to a sweet bloom of regional history.
WEB EXTRAS
For our narrated 360 degree video of this column, click right here.