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Updated: May 28, 2025
As soon as they could be replaced by a pier or trestle-bridge of timber, they were taken up, cleaned and dried, and then packed on their special wagons for transport. This train was in charge of a permanent detachment of troops who became experts in the handling and care of the material and in laying the bridge.
Crossing slowly another trestle-bridge seventy-five feet high, at the upper part of a valley, we rounded a sharp curve, and found ourselves on a lofty mountain-side along which the road is cut, with a deep glen lying 2500 feet below us wrapped in the shades of evening.
Several days were occupied by Sherman in moving McPherson's command to Roswell, twenty miles above the railway, and building a trestle-bridge there, in accumulating supplies and organizing transportation for another considerable absence from the railroad. By the 17th the army was over the Chattahoochee, McPherson on the left, Schoneld next, and Thomas from the centre to the right.
The line crosses the Bear River on another trestle-bridge 600 feet long; and following the valley, we then strike across the higher ground to the head of Ham's Fork, down which we descend, following the valley as far as Bryan or Black's Fork, 171 miles from Ogden. As the day is drawing to a close, I take a last look upon the scene outside before turning in for the night.
I do not know that he can use them on any road here. I did instruct him, while awaiting information from North Carolina, to have them build a good trestle-bridge across Port Royal ferry; but I now suppose the pontoon-bridge will do.
All combined to produce in me a feeling of the utmost wonder and astonishment. Emerging from Echo Cañon and the Castle Rocks, we enter a milder valley, where we crawl over a trestle-bridge 450 feet long and 75 feet high. Shortly after passing Wahsatch Station, we cross the Aspen Summit and reach an opener country.
The timber road was only the width of the single iron track; so that any one looking out of the side carriage-windows would see sixty feet down into space. The beams on which the trestle-bridge is supported, are, in some cases, rested on stone; but oftener they are not.
Generally the single pontoon-train could provide for nine hundred feet of bridge, which sufficed; but when the rivers were very wide two such trains would be brought together, or the single train was supplemented by a trestle-bridge, or bridges made on crib-work, out of timber found near the place.
We cross a trestle-bridge fifty feet above the torrent which boils beneath; and through the black, frowning rocks that guard the pass, I catch the last glimpse of the open sunlit plain below. We are now within the wild Weber Cañon, and the scene is changing every moment. On the right, we pass a most wonderful sight, the Devil's slide.
I was glad when we were very politely invited to get out of the train and walk a plank over a puddle that for a moment submerged the track; glad when we were advised to foot it over a trestle-bridge that sagged in the swift current of a swollen stream; and gladder still when our locomotive began to puff and blow and slaken its pace as we climbed up into the mouth of a ravine fragrant with the warm scents of summer albeit we could boast but a solitary brace of cars, and these small ones, and not overcrowded at that.
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