WE BUILT A BRIDGE (TWICE!)

Enlarge Image Image Gallery ABOVE, LEFT: the cables on James and Sammie Damer-on's Satsop River bridge are anchored in the ground by cedar logs buried four feet deep (the lines on the other side of the river are set in concrete). Treated posts hold the cables?and the bridge?high... well above the unpredictable torrent that ruined the Dameron's first fiver spanner. ABOVE: U-shaped steel rod hangers?salvaged for free from old silos and bent to shape by a neighborhood black-smith?hang from the bridge's ""suspenders"" and under-prop the middle and ends of each 16-foot creosoted board. Jim plans to close in the sides with wire fencing... after he and his wife finish their do-it-yourself country home! PHOTOS BY STEVE BRADLEY

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James Dameron's dream homesite was on the other side of a river. So Jim sat himself down and
learned how to (and how not to!) construct a footbridge.

Don't get me wrong. My wife Sammie and I never meant to build our bridge two times ... once would have been just tine, thank you!

Only we goofed ... and in a big way. I'll tell you about it so you can "go to school on our mistake". That way—if you ever construct your way across a river— your story won't be like ours!

We knew we were a little "green" when we moved from arid southern California to Washington's Olympic Peninsula (where folks say the wells'd go dry if a rainy season totaled less than 70 inches). So, even though the Satsop River that ran through our five acres looked friendly enough, my wife and I decided to be cautious and build our country home on the stream's high side. Unfortunately, the only road (and, of course, our "temporary" trailer) was on the low bank ... that's how we found ourselves in the footbridge business.

As I've said, we only intended to build our "crossin' " once. So we studied materials, researched permits, and examined local bridges for three solid months. This preparation convinced us that we should pattern our structure after one we'd seen in a nearby park. The planks of that span rested on big U-shaped hangers which, in turn, hooked onto two main overhead cables. These steel support lines were strung over upright poles on both sides of the river and then bound fast to massive maples.

Of course, these days it seems you need government permission before you do anything... even in our isolated valley. The Fish and Game folks gave us one of their "hydraulic permits" right away. But some paper-pushing procrastinators at the EPA made us wait two months for a "substantial development permit" ... only to tell us our project was so inexpensive that we didn't need their permission in the first place!

Once the red tape was out of the way, though, we were ready to build. I'd picked up a pile of discarded 3/4" galvanized steel cable at work, but the trees on our river's banks were too small to hold such heavy lines. So, we decided to anchor our bridge supports to buried log "deadmen".

We started on the low side, digging a trench well back from—but parallel to—the river. Then, we dropped a big cedar log (with two short lengths of cable clamped around it) into the ditch. To finish that job, we dug little slots in the side of the trench facing the river... so the steel lines could leave the ground at about a 45° angle. (Otherwise, the tense cables would eventually cut through the soil ... and the whole bridge would sag.)

Next, we covered the wooden deadman, leaving only the two loose wire ends sticking up out of the earth. These were clamped to large turnbuckles ... which were my own brainstorm for cinching up the cables once they were strung. The tighteners cost us $10 apiece...and these were our biggest equipment expense.

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