This stout railway bridge, built about 1899, spans the Kettle River just west of the ghost town of Cascade, an old mining town of the early twentieth century. Resting on a pair of tall stone piers, it is around 75 feet above the river which boils below. About 100 feet in length, it crosses at a deep and narrow gorge with rapids both upstream and downstream, with a larger waterfall a bit further downstream. As part of the Trans Canada Trail, a lookout has been built on the upstream side of the bridge to afford a better view of the river and the gorge below.
Built by the CPR as part of the Columbia & Western Railway, this section of the line was amalgamated with the Kettle Valley Railway and saw service until the last train ran in 1991. Over the course of the next few years the tracks were taken up and the railbed eventually became a rail trail, managed by the
Columbia and Western Trail Society (C&WTS).
The Columbia and Western Rail Trail is 162 Km long from Castlegar, British Columbia to Midway, B.C. and travels the abandoned Canadian Pacific Boundary Subdivision with the last train going through in 1991. In 2000 the C.P.R. donated the line to the Province of British Columbia for a Recreational trail to form [part of] the British Columbia [section of the] Trans-Canada Trail network.
From the C&WTS
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