LUCIN CUTOFF SHAVED HOURS FROM PROMONTORY ROUTE
[United Transportation Union, 11-25-03, from article in Salt Lake Tribune]
PROMONTORY POINT, Utah - On a map, Promontory peninsula looks like a Stone Age knife plunged deep into the jugular of the Great Salt Lake, according to John Keahey of the Salt Lake Tribune.
For someone standing on a high ridge above its tip, the view underscores the magnitude of a giant railroading project that opened 100 years ago this Wednesday: the 102-mile long Lucin Cutoff, strung in the 20th century's earliest days like a dun-colored necklace across the northern end of the nation's largest inland sea.
The Southern Pacific railroad built that causeway, including 12 miles of wooden trestles that no longer exist, so freight and passengers could avoid the longer, hillier portion of the intercontinental rail line completed in 1869.
That original line, built by the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads, curved around the northern edge of the Great Salt Lake, was 43 miles longer than the causeway, and was replete with steep grades and horrific switchbacks that ate up valuable time.
"In addition to the 1,515-foot climb, there were enough curves in the track to turn a train around eleven times," author David Peterson wrote in his 2001 book, Tale of the Lucin: A Boat, a Railroad and the Great Salt Lake.
After a brief debate over whether the cutoff should be built around the lake's south end, from the original Central Pacific station at Lucin to Salt Lake City, Southern Pacific chose the Lucin-to-Ogden route - a straight shot across the water.
Construction began in February 1902. The trestle, a combination of earthen causeway and wood, opened for freight trains on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 26, 1903. Passenger service began in 1904, and lasted until 1971 when Amtrak service was launched, using an east-west line through Salt Lake City farther south.
Several lives were lost while the Lucin Cutoff was being built and still more lives were lost from train accidents and trestle fires throughout the early 20th century. One of the worst occurred on Feb. 19, 1904, when two trains collided, killing 24 construction workers, including 16 Greek immigrants.
The causeway has dramatically shifted the ecology of the lake over the past century, acting "like a dam that divides the lake into two very different pieces," according to a 2000 story in The Salt Lake Tribune. "The majority of fresh water flows into the south arm, reducing the salinity there. . . . Meanwhile the north arm has become like a giant evaporation pond where the water has become too salty."
This unintended result from the causeway's dam effect has turned the water in the north end a reddish-pink because certain types of bacteria thrive in the high-saline concentration. Construction over the years to equalize this balance - two culverts beneath the tracks and a 300-foot-wide breach created by the state in 1985 - have had little impact on this imbalance.
The biggest obstacle to construction of the causeway - and to its ongoing maintenance, which requires regular applications of earth and rocks - is the lake's deep-mud bottom. This created devilish problems for 1902-era pile drivers attempting to sink wooden poles as support for the trestles, which are today replaced by an extension of the earthen causeway.
How muddy was it? "The first pile, twenty-six feet long, was sent down out of sight with a single stroke of the ponderous hammer; a second log twenty-eight feet long was set upon the first, and one blow sent them both out of sight," Peterson quotes from a 1902 edition of the Ogden Standard newspaper. "There must be fifty feet of mud, and how much more no man knoweth."
Those salt-and-water-soaked trestles, made primarily from the hearts of prime redwood trees, were removed late in the 20th century.
According to an article in a 2000 edition of Union Pacific's employee magazine, trestle components were being salvaged, cleaned up and resold as beams, flooring and mantles for homes and businesses.
Today, scientists know the precise depth of the mud - and the extreme depth of soft soils below that mud before bedrock is reached.
According to David Dinter, a University of Utah assistant professor of geology and geophysics, mud that has accumulated on the bottom over the past 10,000 years ranges from 6 to 40 feet. It is thickest just west of Promontory Point, and decreases westward.
"The pilings went through this mud and through a thin layer of salt" beneath that mud, said Dinter. At that point, the pilings would have confronted a thick layer of sediments, which Dinter estimates would be 2 to 3 kilometers (1.24-2.86 miles) deep, before hitting bedrock.
"The causeway sank several feet in the first few years after construction," the professor said. "By 1980, the rate of sinking had reduced to about 2.5 inches a year."
He said that most of the subsidence is caused by "lateral spreading" resulting from the weight of the rock load that squeezes the deep mud away from the causeway's sides. Hence, the need for a continuous maintenance operation.
Omaha-based Union Pacific spokesman John Bromley adds that because salt water is heavy, moisture-laden wind "picks up the boulders and carries them away. Waves just take them out."
Despite all this, Bromley said the ongoing maintenance is worth it.
"This is [Union Pacific's] primary east-west route. It carries 20 [freight] trains a day, and it allows us to bypass a lot of traffic through Salt Lake City," he said.
Just a few years after the Lucin Cutoff's opening, the former Western Pacific railroad built a line along the south shore of the Great Salt Lake between Salt Lake City and Wells, Nev.
Today, it parallels Interstate 80 and hooks into the line from the Lucin Cutoff at Wells. It carries about six trains a day, including Amtrak. Union Pacific acquired Western Pacific in 1982 and Southern Pacific in 1996.
The cutoff is 36.2 miles shorter than the old Western Pacific line. Ogden to Wells is 177.6 miles on the cutoff; Ogden to Wells via Salt Lake City is 213.8 miles.
"The Lucin Cutoff line is significantly more used," Bromley said. The line farther south "has its own maintenance problems across the Salt Flats."
[United Transportation Union, 11-25-03, from article in Salt Lake Tribune]