Like most adolescent boys growing up in the South, I went through a phase in Junior High when I was really into professional trestling. I watched it all: World Trestling Federation, World Championship Trestling, and of course, Gorgeous Ladies of Trestling. My friends and I would spend every day after school backyard trestling at Philip Hardesty’s house. His parents were pretty into trestling too, so they didn’t mind the hijinx.
I heard all the rumors, the arguments that professional trestling was fake, that it was a sham perpetrated by Big Railroad to make money. But like the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and hot chicks who aren’t completely batshit crazy, I wanted to believe it was real. I owe some of the most treasured memories of my childhood to elevated railways. Sleepovers at Brian Bier’s house when he’d pop the scratchy, unlabeled copy of Stand By Me he stole from his dad’s study into the VCR and we’d watch the trestle scene over and over again with the sound down, throw pillows strategically-placed to hide our growing excitement.
Sometime around High School trestling lost its luster. We found girls, or skateboarding, or aqueducts. Those of us who bonded over trestles drifted apart, barely even acknowledging each other in the halls. But every once in a while I see a trestle, and that same giddiness and passion I felt as a teenager comes flooding back. Proust had his madeleine, I have my Holcomb Creek Trestle.
Railroad crews who regularly ply its length call it “The Valley of Wood”, which is what we call our group rides after we run into the Ironclad ladies team. Soaring some 90 feet above the aptly-named Dick Road near Helvetia and spanning 1168ft, it is the longest and highest wooden train trestle still in operation in the US. It was built by United Railways between 1906 and 1911, in part to provide electric interurban train service between Portland and Banks. Although it did carry the odd passenger train, its primary cargo was lumber. The five corrugated metal cladding that run the height of the supports at evenly-spaced intervals are designed to serve as firebreaks should the trestle catch fire. Trains carrying freshly-hewed logs can occasionally be seen inching across the span, as in the video below. Skip to 2:05 to see the train trestle enthusiast version of the up-trestle beavershot.
