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1965 is a year I actually remember something about, at least my summer activities. During
the summer months between school years, I worked to earn money for school and anything else
that I wanted. Prior years I was sent out to my aunt's farm to work and didn't really have
any say about it. The wages were such that getting a 'real' job was a major improvement.
This is the year I started summer work for the Union Pacific Railroad. They hired us 'kids'
for the summer and the wages were good. I started work on a B&B gang (Building and Bridges)
that operated out of Hill City, Kansas. We were replacing the small wooden bridge structures
that crossed numerous creeks and streams with new steel ones. We had the use of an old steam
pile driver that would drive the I-beams down to bedrock then they would be cut off and
another piece was used to cap the pilings. As I recall, each support section had three
pilings, one Vertical and two splayed out away from the tracks. This was not a 'main line'
track so interruptions for train traffic were few and far between. We stayed in bunk cars in the yard and rode the pile driver out to the crossing where we were working. As the distance increased away from the yard, we rode in the truck to the work site and waited for the pile driver to arrive. It couldn't make it to the work sites without stopping at least once to build steam back up.

I was 18 going on 19 at the time and didn't have a car of my own so on Friday I would catch a ride with one of the guys going back to Salina or further and then get picked up Sunday evening to head back. One time I had to take the bus back to work and rode the stupid thing all night and transferred to a car they ran down to Hill City. I would have been late to work but for one of the guys picking me up as I walked along highway 283 down to the yard. This little all nighter convinced me that I needed my own transportation. I started looking around town and found me a 1957 Chevy Bel-Aire. They wanted the princely sum of $400 for it which, of course, I didn't have. On another weekend home, I negotiated a loan with a finance company as well as a lot of twisting of ol dads arm to do it. I think this took a little time to work out because I was buying the car from Money Chevrolet in Hill City but getting the money to pay for it in Salina. As a kid, no problem at all to doing it! Anyway, one Friday night after work, I picked up the car, filled it up with gas, and headed for Colorado. Why would I do that you ask? Well, I'll tell you.

Colorado Flood
South Platte & Arkansas Basins:

June 14-20, 1965

The flood peak on East Bijou Creek hit the town of Deer Trail on June 17, leaving tons of mud and debris and destroying 80% of the business section. An Air Force helicopter rescued several people, some of who were pulled out of East Bijou Creek. The three forks of Bijou Creek washed out or damaged bridges on the main line of the Union Pacific Railroad and highway I-70-U.S. 40.

We had gotten the word Friday that we and our ancient pile driver were needed to repair the damage done by the floods in Colorado. I didn't know it at the time, but we would be doing this job for the rest of the summer. Our initial destination was Hugo, Colorado. We were to setup operations out of there for awhile. Of course, the bunk cars did not arrive by that evening, so we had to make other sleeping arrangements. I was with a small group where one of them had a relative in town and got to go to their house. I don't remember what the other guys did. We gave our host a small stipend for her hospitality and went off to work. This was one of a few weekends that we stayed doing overtime.

A quick word about I-70 would be in order. After all, it's 1965 now. The Interstate was only completed as far west as Gorham, Kansas which is a little east of Hays. After that, it was back to the standard 2-lane blacktop of U.S. 40. The flood that went through this part of Colorado took out 3 railroad bridges and some of highway 40 road deck and bridges. Three new I-70 concrete bridges with no road deck leading to them had been built. I remember at least 2 of them were laying down in the sand at odd angles, washed away from their original location. I was impressed by what it would have taken to do that. The track rails leading up to the first washed out bridge were rolled up and over and it looked like a picket fence until it got completely upside down. The first railroad bridge was at least 75% buried in the sand off to the east of where it had been. I never saw anything of the other two railroad bridges. The bridges were located between Deer Trail and Strasburg. We were not the only crew that was sent to this location to do the rebuilding. Guys on the Section (track maintenance) and Steel Erection were there too. In fact, there were really two full sets of crews if you will because they were driving the bridges from both the east and west ends of the line.

Since we were based in Hugo, there was travel time to get to the work site and back. Wouldn't you know it, there was a weigh station along the way and we got to stop both coming and going. I thought that was odd at the time but I guess the U.P. is a carrier. I seem to remember that we disassembled that bad track when we first arrived while others were busy rebuilding the track bed and laying new rails. That had to be done before the pile driver could come up to start building the pilings. The new bridges were to be steel open deck girder and there were no handrails on them. The one old bridge that I saw that we were replacing was a steel through truss design. I can't remember exactly how long we stayed in Hugo but it wasn't too long before they moved the bunk cars (and us) to Deer Trail and no more going through the weigh station at Limon.

We built a temporary piling to be set ahead of each new piling that was driven so the pile driver could reach out beyond it to drive the next one. This process was repeated span after span until you got to the other end of your bridge. We got to make a solid base of timbers and large blocks on the sand to set that temporary piling. I just loved all the shovel work involved. We did a good job since we didn't drop the pile driver into the drink. I have to admit that our old ancient steamer could flat out get the job done fast. You could see measurable movement of those I-beams when it hit them. I had the opportunity to be over at the west end of the whole operation on a couple of occasions and watched a new diesel pile driver pounding away and couldn't see it moving a darn thing. It was definitely slower at getting the job done. That was proven out since we had the center bridge about 1/3 completed before those guys arrived to start out from the other end. There was the usual whistles in celebration from both pile drivers when the bridges were completed. After that most of the other gangs left the area and we were around for a little time after that to do some cleanup work. The day we all started back for Hill City was my last day for that summer job. The foreman sent me on my way early and I waved goodbye to the guys. Old Bill and Claude wanted to say a few words or give me some crap (I'll never know which) but he shooed me on down the road.

And so ended my summer of 1965.