Alaska scrapbook

On Sept. 2, 1935, F.A.J. Galwas and Al Goetz drove the first automobile across the newly completed half-mile Douglas Bridge from Douglas to Juneau, a classic steel-truss bridge.

The first automobile to cross was actually the second vehicle, the first being a dump truck, according to a special edition of the Juneau Empire published Oct. 13, 1935. The special edition, available at the Alaska State Library, featured the new bridge.

Alaska’s capital city had been separated from Douglas Island and one community of the same name by the Gastineau Channel. Prior to the bridge construction at West 10th Street in Juneau, the only access to the island and the community located two miles south of Juneau was by ferry. A bridge had been contemplated as early as 1900, and plans became a reality in late 1933 during the Depression, when federal Public Works Administration funds were allocated for it.

The span of the steel bridge was 516 feet, its elevation was 66 feet, and its total length was 2,701 feet. Although a number of local people had hoped to save the original bridge, including former Mayor Bill Overstreet, it was demolished and replaced in 1981.

But part of the bridge was saved by a Juneau couple, Bill Leighty and Nancy Waterman, who used a number of the steel beams from the bridge in the construction of their two-story “earth-sheltered” home in downtown Juneau at the foot of Mount Roberts.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” Leighty said in explaining why he decided to use some of the steel beams from the bridge. He and his family had outgrown their downtown Juneau home by the late 1970s and were interested in energy conservation in the construction of a new home.

The couple and their structural engineer, Bob Lium, came up with the idea of using the steel beams. When Leighty went to the office of the company in charge of the bridge demolition, he and the engineer, John Carstensen, had an immediate rapport, in part because they discovered they were both engineering graduates of Stanford University.

The steel beams were “pedigreed” and carry the mark of “Carnegie USA,” which Leighty said is perfectly fitting because Andrew Carnegie was one of the nation’s first major philanthropists and Leighty and Waterman focus most of their attention on work for the Leighty Foundation, begun by his father.

Leighty said he paid about $5,000 for the used steel in the early 1980s, obtaining high-quality building materials that otherwise would have been lost from Juneau forever and which would have cost him much more had he purchased the material new.

Juneau panoramic photographer Ron Klein, who specializes in vintage photos and antique cameras, assisted Leighty in obtaining a historic photo of the bridge that the couple had made into an 18-foot-by-10-foot mural that graces their living room wall.

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/8153287p-8046037c.html