Group of people at the dedication of the Million Dollar Bridge over the Copper River, 1910

• Other Authors: University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Division
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Subjects: Railroad bridges > Alaska; Group portraits; Miles Glacier Bridge (Alaska); Childs Glacier; glacier; glaciers; Alaska
• Online Access: http://cdm16786.contentdm.oclc.org:80/cdm/ref/collection/alaskawcanada/id/374

Filed in Alaska--Passes/Bridges--Unidentified The Million Dollar Bridge, standing almost intact on the lower Copper River, is a reminder of another improbable Alaska construction project. Completed in 1910, the Million Dollar Bridge was the crux of the Copper River and Northwestern Railway, built to carry copper oar 196 miles from Kennicott to Cordova. Along that route were some of the greatest obstacles Alaska offers-steep canyons, rivers, hurricane-force winds, mosquitoes, and dozens of glaciers. A fortune in high-grade copper locked deep in the Wrangell Mountains inspired Outside investors, including the Guggenheim family and J.P. Morgan, to risk building a railway from an ice-free port on Alaska's southcentral coast to the rich copper deposits at Kennicott. Two of the largest obstacles on the route were Miles and Childs glaciers, both of which calve icebergs into the Copper River from opposite banks. Erastus Hawkins, the engineer in charge of the railroad project, and Michael Heney, the construction contractor, preferred to run the railroad alongside the Copper River, but the Miles and Childs glaciers sprawl over both shorelines at a pinch-point about 15 miles from the river's mouth. Not listening to other engineers who thought the problem was insurmountable, Hawkins designed a 1,550-foot steel bridge to span the Copper River at a river bend between the two glaciers. Starting in April 1909, workers scrambled to complete the Million Dollar Bridge, spurred on by a U.S. law that gave railroad developers four years to complete a designated route. After four years, the government would tax them $100 per operating mile per year. Contactors finished the bridge by midsummer of 1910. Soon after construction of the Million Dollar Bridge (which cost $1.4 million to build), the glaciers threatened the railroad. In August 1910, two glaciologists from the National Geographic Society studied the sudden advances of both Miles and Childs glaciers. A northern lobe of Childs Glacier began creeping toward the bridge in June, and by August it was moving eight feet per day. On August 17th, the 200-foot face of the glacier was 1,624 feet away from the bridge. Childs Glacier did not engulf the bridge, but the glacier crept to within 1,475 feet in June 1911. Childs and Miles glaciers have since retreated, sparing the Million Dollar Bridge, which served the railway from 1910 until 1938, when low copper prices forced the shutdown of the Copper River and Northwestern Railway. The bridge survived nature's whims until March 27, 1964, when the Good Friday Earthquake knocked the northernmost span from its concrete piling.