Union Street Bridge - Salem, Oregon
Posted by: 
ddtfamily
N 44° 56.825 W 123° 02.535
10T E 496666 N 4977072
Padlocks on historic rails-to-trails bridge
Waymark Code: WMHV2B
Location: Oregon, United States
Date Posted: 08/14/2013
Views: 10
A new Salem tradition is the placement of love padlocks on the Union Street bridge. Unfortunately the City of Salem, according to city workers on site at the time of my visit, view the padlocks as "graffiti" and they periodically make efforts to remove them. When I called them "spoiled sports" (in a good-natured way), they were quick to point out that it wasn't personal and they were just doing what the city told them to do. But try as they might, a fresh batch will appear shortly. The padlocks appear all along the bridge but the largest concentration are generally found at the viewing platforms over the center of the river (location of the GPS coordinates).
The old railroad bridge was built in 1912 and was historically known as the Salem, Falls City and Western Railway, although it has also been called the P. E. & E. Bridge (Portland, Eugene, and Eastern). Today it is simply referred to as the Union Street Railroad Bridge as the eastern terminus aligns with Union Street. It is a truss bridge with a vertical lift span designed to accommodate larger ship traffic beneath. A curved wooden trestle connects to the western edge of the bridge deck. In 2004, Union Pacific donated the abandoned bridge to the City of Salem. In Spring 2009, after an extensive rehabilitation effort, the bridge opened to carrying pedestrian and bicycle traffic over the Willamette River, one of the more celebrated public works projects in Salem in recent memory.
Click a photo to enlarge
