Get the Line Open Quickly!

That was the policy of the Milwaukee Road. To do this in 1907 and 1908, the Chicago, Milwaukee & Puget Sound Railroad built numerous sturdy, but short-lived, wood trestles to prepare the new line for track as soon as possible.

Over the Bitterroot Mountains alone, the railroad constructed twenty-nine of these temporary trestles with a combined length of over 10,000 feet and an average height of about 110 feet.

These structures required the use of about 12 million board feet of timber (enough to build 1,000 average houses)…