File:The great Northwest - a guide-book and itinerary for the use of tourists and travellers over the lines of the Northern Pacific Railroad, the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company and the Oregon and (14756497544).jpg

Identifier: greatnorthwestgu00wins (find matches)
Title: The great Northwest : a guide-book and itinerary for the use of tourists and travellers over the lines of the Northern Pacific Railroad, the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company and the Oregon and California Railroad : containing descriptions of states, territories, cities, towns, and places along the routes of these allied systems of transportation, and embracing facts relating to the history, resources, population, products, and natural features of the great Northwest
Year: 1883 (1880s)
Authors: Winser, Henry Jacob, 1823-1896
Subjects: Northern Pacific Railroad Company Oregon Railway and Navigation Company Oregon and California Railroad
Publisher: New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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haracter and engineeringexcellence of the work. The Missouri here has the same marked characteristics that exist for itswhole length. It is a silt-bearing river of the first magnitude. Deep belowthe surface lies a hard, stratified material—sometimes indurated clay, some-times rock—but above this its bed is simply a mass of moving silt, which ithas itself brought down from the disintegrating soil of the mountains, overwhich the river seems to maintain supreme control, working to the rightor left or downwards. At the site where the Bismarck bridge now stands,during the progress of the work the depth of water varied from nothing tofifty feet, with a change in the surface elevation of not over ten feet, theflood washing out in its earlier stages the bottom of the river, which thesame flood replaced with material brought from some point farther up,within a few days thereafter. A descriptive outline of the bridge and themethods which were pursued in its construction is here appropriate.
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M TJie Great Bridge over the Missouri. 113 The Missouri River, at this point, is 2,800 feet wide, with a variablechannel, about two-thirds of the whole width of the river, which is occupied,except at extreme high water, by sand bars. It was necessary to build a dikefrom the west shore to within 1,000 feet of the east shore, which is herea high bluff of extremely hard clay, in order to confine the river within awidth favorable to the maintenance of a fixed channel. The constructionof the dike was begun in the autumn of 1880, but, owing to the shiftingcharacter of the channel, the state of affairs was at first perplexing. Be-fore any work was actually begun on the dike the channel had passed tothe west side of the river, and the winter of 1880-81 found the work invery imperfect condition. It therefore became necessary to make a strongeffort to prevent the destruction, by the breaking up of the ice, of the workwhich had already been done. On the 30th of March the ice movedout with unusua

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