Columbia Gorge rail line (#0416)

Many of the cuts for the railroad are quite dramatic and look to have been very arduous construction. Unfortunately I didn’t make a record of exactly where this was taken, but based on times of other pictures, this seems to have been taken near Roosevelt, WA.

From what I could find, the first rail line along the northern bank of the Columbia opened in 1908 and provided passenger service between Vancouver, WA and Pasco, WA. I could not find out whether cuts like this represent the original line. Considering that Bonneville Dam was built in the 1930’s and some of the other dams as late as 1971, it is likely that the flooding of the reservoirs resulted in many of the lines having been moved to higher points.