Camas Prairie Railroad trestles

The Camas Prairie Railroad — jointly built by the Northern Pacific and Union Pacific to serve the new wheat country — was constructed 1907–19 across the Camas Prairie’s canyon breaks, with wooden trestles up to a hundred feet tall carrying the line across draws that had defeated earlier roads. The ‘railroad on stilts’ earned a national engineering reputation and became the region’s grain lifeline for a century, running until the 1990s–2000s when trucks took the traffic; the trestles remain standing across the breaks, and the route is now the region’s backroad-and-motorcycle classic with the viaducts visible from the canyon roads. The joint Northern Pacific–Union Pacific operation ran the line for decades as the region’s grain lifeline; trucks eventually took the traffic and the line wound down in the 1990s–2000s, but the wooden viaducts — some climbing a hundred feet on timber trestle-work — remain standing across the breaks, and the route is now the region’s backroad-and-motorcycle classic with the structures visible from the canyon roads.