A fairly rudimentary wooden truss bridge built on stone pilings from 1890–1891 by C. F. Swigert’s Pacific Bridge Company on behalf of the Columbia Street Bridge Company. George W. Brown was involved with both this company and the Mount Tabor Street Railway Company, which planned to use the bridge to reach Portland on the West Side. The bridge was opened to all traffic—including streetcars—on January 11, 1891, and was operated as a toll bridge for pedestrians and road traffic by the bridge company.

The bridge’s roadway was twenty feet wide had two lanes for traffic and streetcars, with six-foot sidewalks on either side for a total width of 40 feet. Original plans had called for it to be double-deck bridge, with streetcars on the lower level and other traffic above, but this concept was rejected by the City of East Portland because the approach on the East Side would have had to extend several blocks up Hawthorne Avenue (as the approaches to today’s Hawthorne Bridge do). However, the stone piers were built to support the double-deck bridge, leading them outlasting the wooden superstructure and being reused for the replacement bridge in 1899.

In an unexpected move, the newly-unified City of Portland purchased the bridge outright on November 11, 1891 for $145,000 and began to operate it as a free bridge. The East Side Railway Company, which up to now had run freely over what was basically “their” bridge, now paid an annual license fee to the city for the privilege.

On November 1, 1893, the bridge was the scene of Portland’s worst streetcar accident, as the East Side Railway’s car Inez plunged off the open bridge on a foggy and icy morning into the Willamette River. Seven lives were lost, and the motorman, E. F. Terry, went through an arduous legal process before he was finally acquitted of manslaughter.

The bridge was the only one across the Willamette River to remain open during the Great Flood of 1894.

By mid-1899, the bridge was declared unsafe and plans for a new structure were commenced. In late November, a log-jam from flooding caused the bridge to be closed to all traffic due to safety concerns. Construction on the new bridge began almost immediately, demolishing the wooden trusses and roadway, but retaining the original stone piers. The old draw span was retained for cost reasons, but needed replacement less than a year after the new bridge opened. Remarkably, streetcar service was reinstated only a few days after the bridge was first closed and continued throughout almost the entire four-month construction period.

Lines Served

• Hawthorne (1889–1936)
• Mount Scott (1892–1901, 1901–1936)
• Oregon City (1891–1958)
• Sellwood (1892–1940)

Untitled