A Trip to Promontory: A Guest Blog by Cindy Lund, In Memory of Tim Costello

- Lake Level: 4198.4′-
- 220 Miles Round-Trip -

Note from Nicole: Cindy Lund is a dear friend to both Heidi and me. She has come along with us on our journey this summer to help drive when she is able, keep track of our finances, and help us not lose our sanity in the midst of it all. Unfortunately last September she received the call that no daughter wants to get. Her father had become ill and rushed to the hospital. He passed away a few days after she reached his side to say farewell. As I have scheduled events for our blog I asked Cindy if there was one place she could go this summer where would it be? This is a story from her heart about revisiting that one special place that she knew she could find her Dad’s heart and soul once again riding on the rails of a train.

I moved to Utah in 1994. It took me until 2001 to get my father to come for a visit. He wanted to come but for some reason he couldn’t do it. The conversation that finally made him take the plunge went like this, “Dad, I’m getting married, I need you to walk me down the aisle and the aisle is in Utah.”

Cindy and her Dad Tim Costello

He came, along with the rest of my family, and I couldn’t wait to take him to The Golden Spike National Historic Site which is at Promontory Summit. My father was a railroad fan to the core and I thought this was the one place any railroad fan would be excited to see.

We saw where the Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad joined their rails, completing the first Transcontinental Railroad on May 10, 1869. While at the visitor’s center we saw the replicas of Union Pacific No. 119 and the Jupiter, watched the movie, looked at the exhibits, shopped in the gift shop, and had a picnic.

While eating his sandwich, my father told me this was great but what he really wanted to see was the railroad causeway. “The what?” I asked. I didn’t know much about the Lake at that time but we were able to figure out how to get to Promontory Point.

My father knew all about the Lucin Cutoff which was a railroad trestle and causeway that cut across The Great Salt Lake. Operations began in the spring of 1904 and eventually made the previous route through Promontory Summit obsolete. The new route across the Lake made the trip 43 miles shorter and came without any steep grades. Eventually, the railroad trestle was replaced by a causeway mainly because trains had to slow down when crossing the trestle. A solid causeway would mean less travel time and by the early 1960′s the railroad trestle was obsolete.

When we got to Promontory Point we found Trestlewood, the company that reclaims wood from the old railroad trestle that crossed Great Salt Lake. My dad liked to save things and recycle things and I believe finding this company soothed his soul knowing the railroad trestle was living on whether it was in someone’s front porch pillars or their dining room table.

We wandered around for a bit and then a train came. My dad was off and running to see it better. He wanted to get a few photos to share with his railroad buddies back home. This is one of my most favorite memories of my father. He was so happy at that moment.

So, fast forward to 2011 and the Summer of Salt blog. I wanted to write a guest blog and I knew that I wanted to go back to Trestlewood, to see a train on the causeway, and to remember my dad who passed away last year in September.

On the morning of July 21, my husband, Tom Lund, Nicole Anderson, Emily Gaines, and I started on our journey. I contacted Trestlewood earlier in the week and they were expecting us around 9:00 for a tour. They had the gate to the railroad causeway open so we could take the shortcut! We could hardly contain our excitement!

As we crossed the causeway we saw the expansive evaporation ponds to the north and both Fremont Island and Antelope Island to the south. We could see where the Bear River finally joins the main part of the Lake. After the river flows down the mountains and through the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge what water remains is released into Bear River Bay. After leaving the bay it runs alongside the mineral evaporation ponds and eventually mixes with the main body of the Lake by way of a breach in the causeway.

Cindy & Nicole at Trestlewood

The tour of Trestlewood was so much more than we expected. Freddy Cannon, son of one of the owners, Fred Cannon took us to see every aspect of the operation. In March of 1993 Cannon Structures, Inc. obtained the rights to salvage the trestle in Great Salt Lake. This was the beginning of their new company: Trestlewood. All of the original railroad trestle has been removed from the Lake. It took hydraulic equipment, lot’s of manpower, and over seven years to do it.

Initially Trestlewood wasn’t planning to do any of the processing, but there weren’t any mills willing or able to take this type of wood. There were issues with different sizes, embedded metal, and the salt content. They had a huge advantage because they did not know how to process new lumber and thus “Trestlewood has been able to design its remanufacturing processes and machinery from the ground up, based upon the physical characteristics of the wood from the trestle.”

train by Cindy Lund

We got to see it all. We started our tour where they mill the wood, and as Freddy explained that the main saw mill building was made from a salvaged barge (more recycling!), Nicole yelled, “Cindy, here comes a train!” and I was off, running to get the shot. (Just like my Dad all those years before.) That’s when I started to cry a little. I missed my dad but I knew he would want me to get over it and get on with the tour.

The Trestlewood facility is quite large and so we all piled in Freddy’s car. He took us down to the huge barge that was used to harvest the wood (and previously to build the causeway). Freddy explained that once the reclaimed wood was back on land the metal used to hold the railroad trestle together is removed. A unique machine was constructed to pull the giant nails and other metal from the wood. The next step is to mill the wood and then nail the lumber to other pieces of wood. Finally these “pallets” are set out to age, sometimes for years.

Now that I know quite a bit more about the Lake, I was in awe that while Promontory Point is in the middle of nowhere, it is a central hub of activity on the Lake. There were brine shrimp boats in dry-dock and a forklift driver unloading boxes from a big rig trailer for this fall’s harvest. We could see Behren’s Trench where brine is transported from Great Salt Lake Minerals’ North Arm evaporation ponds to the processing ponds next to Bear River Bay. We could see the railroad tracks and the causeway where trains take the shortcut to deliver goods from one place to another. In the middle of all of this was Trestlewood working to give the wood of the railroad trestle a new life.

Then there I was, keeping my father’s memory alive. I wanted to see another train.

Visit: Golden Spike National Historical Site is located southwest of Corrine, Utah and is approx. a two and half hour drive one way from Salt Lake City. The Trestlewood Company is on the far tip of Promontory and you can see their website for additional information.  Trestlewood has an extensive website about the history of the railroad trestle, the salvage, and the products they sell.