Zion-Mount Carmel Highway, 62-foot Concrete Arch Pine Creek Bridge, Spanning Clear Creek, Springdale

Source document Quoted word for word from HAER UTAH,27-SPDA.V,3E-. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

The development of the Zion-Mt. Carmel Highway was significant to the development of the National Parks in Utah and Arizona. The Bureau of Public Roads constructed the 62' Concrete Arch Pine Creek Bridge as part of the Zion-Mt. Carmel Highway. Access to the four parks in this area, Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon, Cedar Breaks and Zion National Park was greatly improved with the building of the highway. Each component of the highway system is important as it relates to the development of this area and tourism as a major industry in Utah and Arizona. Due to the rugged terrain in Zion National Park, each bridge and tunnel was integral to the highway's completion.

Source document Quoted word for word from HAER UTAH,27-SPDA.V,3E-. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

Julie W. Osborne. Office of Burtch W. BeaJl, FAIA, Architect, Salt Lake City, Utah. December J ;-. ',U>' r .'. -., -\. ; - -> .- *3f Zion-Mount Carmel Highway, 62' Concrete Arch Pine Creek Bridge HAER No. UT-39-E Page 2 II. HISTORY A.

Need for Highway

Tourism and travel to Zion National Park doubled from to increasing to more than visitors by Along with the development of Bryce Canyon, Cedar Breaks and the Grand Canyon, transportation between the parks became an increasingly pressing matter. Meeting the transportation needs of tourists in southern Utah was difficult. By passable auto roads reached Zion, Kaibab, North Rim, Bryce Canyon, and Cedar Breaks, but some of the routes were circuitous and it required a great deal of extra travel to make the loop.

Thus the road from LaVerkin to Zion had to be retraced in order to go from Hurricane to Pipe Springs, while to reach Cedar Breaks a special side trip was necessary from either Parowan or Cedar City, and to get back to Cedar City from Bryce required a routing through Panguitch and Paragonah. Popular demand was growing for shorter and more direct routes as well as for better roads.2 The problem, as described by Howard Means, Utah State Road Engineer, was the connection between highways 89 and 91. (Today, Interstate 15 follows the same route as the old highway These two highways travelled north and south through Utah, but on opposite sides of a mountain range; highway 89 was on the eastern side, and highway 91 on the west. At the time, there were two connecting routes between the highways.

The connection to the north of the parks was Bear Valley road, which ran southeast from Paragonah, over a high summit, to Alton. However, this route was only open for travel during the summer, with severe weather conditions making travel impossible in the winter. The southern connection between highways 89 and 91 was equally undesirable, which required traveling through northern Arizona, from Freedonfa to Hurricane. According to Means, this route was unacceptable travel for tourists, since it required travel of an extra 175 miles in order to visit all three parks, Zion, Cedar Breaks and Bryce.3 The Federal Bureau of Public Roads wished to eliminate the detour, and the search for a connecting link became a priority.

In a study of the area was initiated by the Federal Bureau of Public Roads and the Utah State Road Commission, and with the help of the House Committee for the National Park Service4, the determination was made to build the Zion-Mt. Carmel Highway. Zion-Mount Carmel Highway, 62' Concrete Arch Pine Creek Bridge HAER No. UT-39-E Page 3 B. DEVELOPMENT OF THE ZION MT.-CARMEL HIGHWAY B. J. Finch, Bureau of Public Roads, and Howard C. Means, were assigned to determine the passage for a road through Zion National Park. John Winder, a rancher and pioneer of the uplands on the east rim of Zion National Park,5 helped to determine the proposed route.

Exploration by Finch, Means and Winder required a journey on horseback through the rugged terrain, camping and hiking, and, where "it was necessary to get around ... sand ledges two or three inches wide",6 scrambling to reach the top of the summit so they could observe the area to the west. During this expedition. Finch, Means and Winder determined the route that would evolve into the Zion-Mt. Carmel Highway. The September 26, Salt Lake Tribune described the implications of the Zion-Mt. Carmel Highway: . . . the proposed automobile highway will rival in construction anything along the famed Columbia river highway, while the scenery it traverses will be something without parallel and such as hitherto has been possible only by a trip on horseback.

The completion of this road will make it possible to enjoy these wonders while seated in an automobile and on a good, safe road with a steady grade, but only a few feet of it in excess of 6 per cent. As a tourist attraction, therefore, the road should have a wonderful value. It will also have important economic use to Kane county and part of the Arizona "strip", north of the Kaibab forest. At present that region can reach the railhead at Cedar City for three or four months In summer, over the Cedar Long Valley route. In winter it has been necessary to make a tedious detour through the Arizona desert to Hurricane.7 After four years of planning, a 25 mile road was designed to link the National Park and Mt. Carmel, with miles of the road outside the Park.

The state, with federal aid, would build the mile stretch. Congress appropriated additional funds for the Bureau of Public Roads to build the miles inside the National Park, at a cost of approximately The miles inside the park Included the mile-long Zion-Mt. Carmel Tunnel, and a second tunnel. The Nevada Contracting Company of FaUon, Nevada contracted with the National Park Service to construct the highway. Work began on September 27, with two crews: a road crew to construct the switchbacks and a mining crew to buPd the Zion- Mt. Carmel Tunnel. The process of building this extraordinary tunnel required eleven months and twelve days to blast through the mountain and make cuts in the slickrock country*9 . Four bridges were constructed within the National Park section of the Zion-Mt.

Carmel Highway. The Reynolds-Ely Construction Company of Springville, Utah, constructed Zion-Mount Carmel Highway, 62' Concrete Arch Pine Creek Bridge HAER No. UT-39-E Page 4 the bridges, and Ora Bundy Construction of Ogden provided the paving and finish work. These features of the Zion-Mt. Carmel Highway combined to make it "one of the most spectacular engineering feats in the history of road-building within the Rocky Mountain Region of the National Park Service."10 62' CONCRETE ARCH PINE CREEK BRIDGE {CLEAR CREEK BRIDGE) The 62' Concrete Arch Pine Creek Bridge (Clear Creek Bridge) is located at milepoint on the Zion Mt.-Carmel Highway. The name Concrete Arch Pine Creek" appears on the original drawings, but the common name of the structure is Clear Creek Bridge.

Howard Means did not discuss this name change directly, but he did provide information on the connection between Clear Creek and Pine Creek. Means concluded that the first maps of the area were inaccurate because the terrain was too rugged for anyone to determine the exact courses of these two creeks. These maps showed Clear Creek and Pine Creek to be two distinct streams. Pine Creek was believed to be about two miles long and flowed westerly into the north fork of the Virgin River, near the entrance of Zion Canyon. The head of Pine Creek was considered to be a perpendicular rock wall a few miles east of Zion Canyon, near what is today called the Great Arch.

Clear Creek began far to the east of Pine Creek, near Orderville, flowing westerly for a stretch and then turning south to meet the south fork of the virgin River. However, when Means, Firth and Winder were surveying the Pine Creek area, they perilously climbed up the Great Arch, being rewarded with a panoramic view of the region. From this vantage point, these men looked westerly, seeing Pine Creek empty into the north fork of the Virgin River. Looking to the east, over the rugged terrain toward Orderville, these men were surprised to see that Clear Creek did not turn south, but continued to flow west and connected with Pine Creek.

Thus, Pine Creek and Clear Creek were actually the same stream.11 Today, the western portion of this stream, from the Great Arch to the Virgin River, is still called Pine Creek, while the eastern portion is referred to as Clear Creek. As a consequence of this naming, the 62' Concrete Arch Pine Creek Bridge may have been renamed when the bridge (UT-39-B) over what is today called Pine Creek was completed in However, no documentation has been found to support this assumption. The 62' Concrete Arch Pine Creek Bridge (Clear Creek Bridge) is a concrete arch bridge with a girder and floorbeam system. The deck structure is cast-in-place concrete. Built in the bridge possesses two continuous arch ribs spanning 66 feet with a rise of 13 feet 3 inches.

The entire bridge is 99 feet long, with a roadway width of 20 feet and a deck width of feet. The cast concrete, gothic arched railing has a continuous concrete cap and features recessed exposed aggregate end panels. The construction of the bridge required 178 cubic yards of class A concrete, sacks of cement cubic yards of sand, cubic yards of gravel and over pounds of reinforcing steel.13 The designer is listed by the initials on the original drawings. There are 2" x 2" negatives of the original construction drawings on file at the Utah Department of Transportation. ,, There have been no major changes or alterations In the bridge.

The bridge is in use even though the status of the bridge is currently listed as functionally obsolete.14 Zion-Mount Carmel Highway, 62' Concrete Arch Pine Creek Bridge HAER No. UT-39-E Page 5 IV. PROJECT INFORMATION This Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) recording project was required as mitigation for the removal and replacement of the bridge. Julie Osborne, under the direction of Burtch W. Beall, FAIA, Architect, was responsible for researching and writing histories for Clear Creek Bridge, Co-op Creek Bridge, and the Short Tunnel in Zion National Park. This report was prepared during the winter of V. ENDNOTES 1. Angus M. Woodbury, A History of Southern Utah and Its National Parks (Salt Lake City, Utah: By the Author, p. 2. Ibid, p. 3. Howard C.

Means, "Autobiography of Howard C. Means" (Salt Lake City, Utah: Dictated for the files of the Utah State Historical Society, 4. Woodbury, A History of Southern Utah and Its National Parks, p. 5. "Shorter Park Road Proposed", Salt Lake Tribune. 26 June 6. Means, "Autobiography of Howard C. Means". 7. "Proposed Road From Zion Park Would Be Valuable", Salt Lake Tribune. 26 September 8. Ibid. 9. Donald T. Garate, The Zion Tunnel. From Slickrock to Switchback (Springdale, Utah: Zion Natural History Association, Inc., p. 39. 10. Jim Jurale and Nancy Witheralt, "Multiple Resources for Zion National Park", National Register of Historic Places Inventory (Salt Lake City, Utah: Utah State Historic Preservation Office, item 8, Page 6. 11. Means, "Autobiography of Howard C. Means". 12.

Jim Jurale and Nancy Witherall, "Multiple Resources for Zion National Park", Item 7, Page 8. 13. Negatives of Original Construction Drawings, Concrete Arch Pine Creek* (Salt Lake City, Utah: Utah Department of Transportation). i 14. Structural Inventory and Appraisal Sheet, National Bridge Inventory (Salt Lake City, Utah: Utah Department of Transportation, i^^^sS^^^^''''''1"''^'' ': '"- ' '' '": ' ' Zion-Mount Carmel Highway, 62' Concrete Arch Pine Creek Bridge HAER No. UT-39-E Page 6 V I. BIBLIOGRAPHY A. BOOKS Garate, Donald T. The Zion Tunnel, From Slickrock to Switchback. Springdale, Utah: Zion Natural History Association, inc., Woodbury, Angus M. A History of Southern Utah and Its National Parks. Salt Lake City, Utah: By the Author, B. NEWSPAPERS Salt Lake Tribune.

26 September "Proposed Road From Zion Park Would Be Valuable". Salt Lake Tribune. 26 June "Shorter Park Road Proposed". C. MISCELLANEOUS Jurale, Jim and Witherall, Nancy. "Multiple Resources for Zion National Park". National Register of Historic Places Inventory. Salt Lake City, Utah: Utah State Historic Preservation Office, Means, Howard C. "Autobiography of Howard C. Means". Salt Lake City, Utah: The Utah State Historical Society, Negatives of Original Construction Drawings, Concrete Arch Pine Creek". Salt Lake City, Utah: Utah Department of Transportation. Structural Inventory and Appraisal Sheet, National Bridge Inventory. Salt Lake City, Utah: Utah Department of Transportation, & ZIon-Mount Carmel Highway, 62' Concrete Arch Pine Creek Bridge HAER No.

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UT-39-E ARCH PINE CREEK BRIDGE (Zion-Mount Carmel Highway, Clear Creek Bridge) Spanning Clear Creek gully at milepost Zion-Mount Carmel Highway Zion National Park Vicinity of Springdale Washington County Utah ADDENDUM TO ZION-MOUNT CARMEL HIGHWAY, 82' CONCRETE ARCH PINE CREEK BRIDGE (Zion-Mount Carmel Highway, Clear Creek Bridge) Spanning Clear Creek gully at milepost State Route 9 Zion National Park Vicinity of Springdale Washington County Utah r PHOTOGRAPHS WRITTEN HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE DATA HISTORIC AMERICAN ENGINEERING RECORD National Park Service P.O. Box Washington, "77