The Gilahina wooden train trestle was built in eight days in January 1911. Copper ore had been discovered in Kennecott and a railway was quickly built to get the ore to Cordova on the coast. The final copper spike was driven on March 29, 1911.
Originally 890 feet long and 90 feet tall, with a 120 degree arc, the trestle required 1/2 million board feet of timber. The original trestle was burned during a wildfire in 1915. The bridge was rebuilt the same summer. It is the 1915 trestle which still stands today.
The McCarthy Road travels the old railroad grade of the Copper River and Northwestern Railway. The CR&NWR, affectionately known to Alaskans as the Can’t Run & Never Will, ran its last train on November 11, 1938.
A Yukon Quest musher and his team breaks through the ice fog…
The revamped Yukon Quest race had its start on Saturday morning. It was a balmy -45F at the first mush.
Officially, Fairbanks dropped to -50F that morning. It was our first “official” -50 since 2017. It was the third morning at the cabin during this cold snap, that I saw -50 on my thermometer. For some reason, my cabin is not considered the official weather station for Fairbanks. For purely political reasons, that honor lies with the Fairbanks International Airport.
Speaking of streaks broken: I broke my previous record for distance traveled with “thumpity-thumpity-thumpity” coming from my tires. For those left out in the heat, tires make that sound after a flat spot forms where they met the driveway during extreme cold temps. It usually only takes a few hundred yards for the tires to warm up enough to reform, but in fifty below, the flat spot lingers for a mile or so.
