Kettle Falls Bridges, Railroad and road bridges in Kettle Falls, Washington, United States.
Kettle Falls Bridges are two steel cantilever structures spanning the Columbia River with a combined length of about 1,267 feet and a main span of approximately 600 feet. The northern bridge carries the Kettle Falls International Railway, while the southern one handles traffic on State Route 20 and U.S. Route 395.
Built in 1941, the bridges replaced earlier structures that were submerged by rising water levels from Grand Coulee Dam construction. This project became essential for reconnecting the region after the old infrastructure disappeared under water.
The road bridge's steelwork was fabricated by the L. Romano Engineering Company of Seattle to a design by R. W. Finke of the Washington Department of Highways. Its punched channel bracing refined the laced channels used on the 1935 Grand Coulee Bridge, and the design was repeated at larger scale on the 1948 Northport Bridge.
The road bridge carries two lanes of State Route 20 and U.S. Route 395, with a 1.1 m footpath on its south side; the parallel rail span is not open to pedestrians. The deck sits about 15 m above the reservoir at normal water level, and the two highways run together east for 20 km to Colville.
During the 1966–1974 drawdown for Grand Coulee's third powerhouse, the reservoir dropped enough to partly expose the old Kettle Falls rapids again, visible upstream of the bridges. The road bridge's deck sits about 15 m above normal reservoir level, though the dam raised the Columbia here by over 30 m.
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