By Pepper Fisher

PORT ANGELES – A 350-foot-long pedestrian bridge in downtown Seattle has been deconstructed and is arriving in Clallam County Monday.

The four enormous steel sections, measuring 13 feet wide, are going to be re-used as foot and bike bridges along the Olympic Discovery Trail portion of the Puget Sound to Pacific Trail Corridor, connecting Clallam, Jefferson and Kitsap counties.

The decommissioned bridge segments were donated by the City of Seattle through an agreement between the Seattle Department of Transportation and Clallam County. The Peninsula Trails Coalition and Puget Sound to Pacific Collaborative helped to initiate and facilitate the donated bridge segments, but Clallam County is responsible for the trucking and unloading of the bridge spans. Steve Gray, Deputy Director of Clallam County Public Works, gives us an idea of the scale of that challenge.

“There’s actually four trucks, oversized trucks, and three of the spans range between 72 and 86 feet. And then two of the spans are welded together and their 113 feet long. So that’s where the 350 come together.”

Gray said, as of noon Monday, the first sections had arrived via the Hood Canal Bridge and were being unloaded at the county’s Morse Creek gravel pit.

When it’s complete, the Puget Sound to Pacific Trail (or PS2P) will link existing trail systems for walking and cycling from the Washington State Ferry docks on Bainbridge Island, Kingston and Port Townsend to the Pacific Coast in La Push. Half of the route is already connected with the Sound to Olympics Trail and the Olympic Discovery Trail.

That leaves only one hundred miles to build to fill the gaps, make the connections and improve safety to complete the PS2P Trail. That’s where these repurposed bridge spans will come in.

Exactly where they’ll be used is still being worked out, but Gray says there are some obvious areas on the map along the way.

“One of the reasons this is a great opportunity is, as we complete the gaps of the Olympic Discovery Trail, there are numerous stream crossings where we need bridges. And we’re also looking at potentially using maybe even the larger span to make a longer bridge crossing in the Bagley Creek Ravine to replace that bridge, which is a short bridge. So, we’re looking at a number of options but no final decisions have been made yet.”

(Photos: Seattle’s Marion Street Pedestrian Bridge, now arriving in Clallam County, courtesy of Steve Gray)