By DANA TIMS/YachatsNews.com
Despite cost increases driven by inflation, a year-long shutdown triggered by the coronavirus and other factors, construction will start as scheduled on a key bridge along a popular Yachats-area hiking trail.
Work is set to begin Oct. 1 to build a 142-foot-long suspension bridge over a creek on Amanda Trail. Completion is expected by the end of February.
Project partners met this week at the construction site, where a landslide in 2015 swept down from clear-cut areas on the hillsides and wiped out a bridge in the largely forested spot.
The partners, representing both public and private interests, had already decided to press ahead with the project, despite estimated costs that climbed tens of thousands of dollars above those roughed out when the project got underway five years ago.
The final contract, between the state and the contractor, Cascade Civil Corp. of Redmond, comes to $434,277, said John Seevers, project manager for the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department. Of that, $350,000 is for the bridge itself and the pilings needed to anchor it, Seevers said.
What pushed the cost higher than previously estimated is the need to develop an access road to the site to accommodate the heavy equipment needed to build the structure and another $30,000 to clean up fallen timber and other debris left over from the 2015 landslide, he said.
Neither of the two items were included in prior estimates because it wasn’t clear they’d be needed.
“Five years ago, when this got underway, we just had a rough guess about what the elements of this project would entail,” Seevers said. “Once we really got into the details, the total projected costs became much more clear.”
Parks officials said they had no doubt they could manage to make up the shortfall to complete the bridge by the end of February – when nesting seasons for threatened marbled murrelets and spotted owls begin, thus ending any construction window.
“I don’t see anything on the horizon that would cause it not to go up,” said Paul Ryan, Oregon parks’ coast region program manager. “There are always caveats, but we have met all the criteria so far.”
Project delayed from 2020
Plans to replace the bridge appeared set in early 2020, only to be scuttled by the economic shutdown imposed by the coronavirus.
Oregon parks, which is overseeing the replacement project, relies on Oregon Lottery money for much of its funding. With restaurants and campgrounds shut down by the virus, the agency was forced to lay off half of its staff, including the engineer who was guiding the bridge replacement project.
However, Joanne Kittel, whose Yachats-area land Amanda Trail crosses, never doubted the bridge would be built.
“Anyone who knows me knows that I always worry about everything,” Kittel said. “It’s my claim to fame. But from the beginning, everyone involved in this has been so strong and so supportive. It’s left me without a doubt that the bridge will be finished and it’ll be great.”
In addition to money from the state and federal government, other major contributions have come from View the Future, a Yachats non-profit co-founded by Kittel; the Three Rivers Foundation, the charitable arm of the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians; the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians of Oregon; the city of Yachats; the Perpetua Foundation/Discover Your Northwest; and Lincoln County’s land legacy program.
The trail over which the bridge crosses is named after Amanda Du-Cuys, one of hundreds of coastal Indians forced at gunpoint by U.S. soldiers in the 1850s and 1860s to march up the coast – often barefoot and over flesh-cutting rocks – to a military facility near present-day Yachats.
Amanda, who was forced to leave her husband and daughter, is thought to be one of at least 300 Indians who died at the military camp between 1855 and 1870.
A dedication ceremony, scheduled for May 21, 2022, is being planned by an advisory committee that includes tribal members, state parks and the non-profit groups that are contributing to the project’s completion. The city of Yachats has promised $10,000 to help fund the event.
- Dana Tims is an Oregon freelance writer who contributes regularly to YachatsNews.com. He can be reached at DanaTims24@gmail.com