Mariners in Hard Hats - The Great Salt Lake Causeway Construction

Bypassing an aging Lucin Cutoff Wooden Railroad Trestle, the Southern Pacific Railroad constructed a massive rock-filled causeway spanning over 12 miles of the Great Salt Lake of Utah in 1959. Tons of earth and rock were moved in an incredible effort to build a new route across the depths of the GSL. Special thanks to the Morrison Knudsen Company, Inc.

[@thomasguffey8265]

Our family of 6 moved into the trailer park at Little Valley while my father worked for M&K as a Diesel Mechanic. He helped keep the massive Euclids and other equipment running. Life for me (a 12 year old boy) was really great. Lots of activities and adventure! School was a 2 room metal building for grades 1-8. the older kids were bussed into Bear River. Dee Smith (Smith's marketplace) had just graduated from College and his family set up a little grocery store. He would drive a van back and forth from Brigham City each day to keep the store stocked. We were paid 25 cents an hour to put items back on the shelves after a blast up in the mountain. We had a little diner and medical dispensary. We killed rattlesnakes, hunted rabbits, and helped herd sheep. One of the best things was riding our bikes along the road out of our village and collecting the empty beer/pop bottles and getting the deposit back for 22 shells and goodies at the diner. They had the very best french fries ever! The massive earth moving equipment, conveyors, barges and tugs made life in little Valley really interesting and fun! I recently drove out to see what was left expecting to find a ghost town type of place but was stopped by a gate. Northshore Rock Products now prevent trespassers so I don't know what is left of this once busy 24/7 construction site.

[@faerthenfelix6419]

Thanks for sharing your story!

[@sixsixthousand-66000]

Does anyone know where the spoils from dredging the lake bottom (prior to building the causeway) were deposited?

[@deezynar]

This video, however bad the sound and image, is a treasure for anyone interested in how this project was accomplished. The film shows a lot of details about the many different types of activities that were needed, it is unfortunate that the film does not follow a linear chronology. It jumps back and forth on the time line in a way that is confusing to anyone who does not pay close attention to the tasks shown, and recognize that certain activities have to come before others. One of the first things they had to do was build the communities for the workers and their families to live in. The project is not close to established towns, and commuting each day would have been a strain on the workers. Equipment was brought in for tunneling into the mountains, and that operation was begun. Rock crushers, docks, and conveyor belts were also brought in and assembled at that time so they would be in place to move and process the rock after the mountains were blown. The tug boats and barges were hauled to the site and assembled and launched. At the time, the largest marine vessels ever hauled over land. When the tunneling was finished, they were packed with explosives, and the mountains were blown up to fracture the rock. The rock was loaded and taken to crushers to be reduced to the correct maximum size. The rock was then loaded onto the bottom dump barges which hauled the majority of it. Once the rock was too close to the water's surface for the bottom dump barges to work properly, the flat top barges were then put into use. They were the ones that had bulldozers on them that pushed the rock over the sides. Once the rock was equal in height to the deck of the flat tops, earth moving equipment was driven onto the fill to level it and place even more rock until it was 12 feet above water level. From that point on it resembled a more typical railroad installation job. The bottom of the lake is made of clay, or ooze, it is soft and structurally unfit to bear a concentrated load. Only one engineer said it was possible for the ooze to support the fill needed for the causeway. The amount of rock needed was much more than the railroad originally thought, but the savings they would accrue over time still made it economically desirable to go ahead with it. The causeway is made with a very wide distribution of rock at the bottom and it tapers towards the top. That makes for a stable pile of rock, but it also distributes the load on the ooze over a very large area. It was calculated from the beginning that the causeway would never stop sinking into the ooze, and that has proven to be an accurate prediction since the time it was "completed". New rock is distributed onto the top of the causeway on a very regular basis. The rails are lifted and rock is placed below them to keep them level and at the desired height. It is not cheap to continually do it, but it is less expensive than building a bridge that will sink and need continuing extensions, or running the trains the extra distance around the north end of the lake.

[@Trestlewood]

Thanks for this comment! We completely agree! Incredible what the generations before pulled off with lesser technology.

[@riceexperiment]

It was built across the lake just for a short cut for the railroad? Was it worth the environmental impact?

[@Lillstisse661]

Yea

[@TheMrrappel]

I enjoyed watching this very much but my god, I'm not blaming you by any means, I'm sure you're definitely not at fault, but I could only watch a quarter of this video before I got really annoyed by the Jake brake wet fart combo sound, I greatly appreciate it being available and think it's amazing and very important to archive this information, but as I'm sure you're well aware, and I apologize for bringing it up but whoever or whatever messed up that audio should be shot and pissed on, really turns this great film into a tolerable video, thank you for sharing this video though, I really appreciate watching old videos like this and am glad it exists though, don't get me wrong, just really doesn't work while watching on quality speakers, it really drowns out the good audio, my phone speakers however drown out the buzz, I highly recommend watching it on phone speakers, not headphones or a sound system, great film to upload though 👍

[@sixsixthousand-66000]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/gaGXopiYl5Zpmdksi=u4Dz2nM51wigjSo0

[@Skipbo000]

How man killed the Great Salt Lake.