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The Koksilah River bridge, more commonly known as the Kinsol Trestle, is one of several trestles along the abandoned Canadian National Railway (CN) line on Vancouver Island. The name Kinsol derives from the King Solomon copper mine that operated briefly in the area.

Canada's railway building boom at the turn of the 20th century inspired Richard McBride, who ran for premier on the promise to bring a third transcontinental railway into British Columbia. In fact, that promise won him the premier's seat in 1910. Fortuitously, the owners of the Canadian Northern Pacific Railway (CNPR) Sir William Mackenzie and Sir Donald Mann, who had been racing across Canada building their transcontinental rail line to the west coast, decided to build an extension on Vancouver Island. As a major shareholder in the Canadian Western Lumber Company, the CNPR intended to exploit their timber reserves on the island.

Surveying began for the island's Cowichan Subdivision in 1910. The CNPR's intention was to bypass the major cities on the island and favour the smaller communities of Sooke, Shawnigan Lake, Kinsol, Deerholme, Lake Cowichan, Youbou, Kissenger (now Nitinat) and Port Alberni. The Daily Colonist newspaper in Victoria reported that the line would "...run from Victoria at the southern tip of the Island, west and north through extensive stands of Douglas fir, cedar and hemlock to Port Alberni at the head of a west coast inlet." The company chose the route primarily for its lumber potential but also for the chance to compete in the lucrative silk market that the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) enjoyed.

Lieutenant-Governor T.W. Paterson turned the sod at a dedication ceremony for the Vancouver Island line on February 18, 1911, and work began. However, the CNPR's urgency to beat the Grand Trunk Railway across Canada to the west coast left the company burdened with debt. In addition, worldwide concern about an impending war had cut off funds from Britain for railway expansion and at the same time, immigration into Canada had slowed, resulting in a lack of manpower. Progress on the island extension was slow. By 1914 only nine bents (the transverse frames that support the horizontal load of the bridge) of the Kinsol Trestle were in place on the south end.

During World War I the construction of all-wood combat fighter airplanes (the de Havilland Mosquito) increased the demand for Sitka spruce, which was harvested on the island. This added more incentive to complete the line and resulted in a spell of rapid progress in 1916. Already, 137 miles of the track sub-grade (a compacted blanket mixture of gravel and sand) had been prepared, taking the line to within four miles of Port Alberni. However, the line never reached that far. When the spruce market collapsed at the end of the war, work on the rail line slowed once again.

In 1918, the federal government forcibly took over the debt-laden CNPR (and its island extension) and incorporated the CNPR and the other transcontinental railways into the new Canadian National Railway (CN). To celebrate the event, and to renew faith in the island project, BC Premier John Oliver struck a "first spike" for the Cowichan Subdivision during a rededication ceremony at Luxton (Mile 9.8). Work resumed.

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Newly completed Trestle
1920
Kinsol Trestle, Cowichan Valley, Vancouver Island, BC Canada


Credits:
Cowichan Valley Museum & Archives

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A mere eight miles of steel had been laid from Victoria by 1918. By the time work resumed on the trestle, 700,000 board feet of lumber, stacked on the sides of the canyon, had rotted and new lumber had to be milled (most likely by the nearby Shawnigan Lake Lumber Company).

On September 18, 1919, the Cowichan Leader newspaper reported that, "At long last a real start has been made on the Koksilah River. Some of the old bents on the north side have been removed. A camp of four or five buildings is in the process of completion. Cement mixers, aerial cables and other materials, are assembled on the south side, and construction of the big piers is to begin. Fifty-five men will work on this project. Work will hold up the laying of steel to Lake Cowichan for several months." Most of the men hired to build the Kinsol Trestle lived in nearby communities. The Superintendent of Construction was John Blyth, from Duncan, and the foreman, Robert Mearns, lived at Cowichan Station.

By the end of 1919, the steel stretched from Victoria to the Kinsol Trestle at Mile 51.1. The trestle was finished in February 1920, and by April of the same year steel rails crossed the canyon. The completed trestle, by no means the highest nor longest in its day, bridged the Koksilah canyon with a total length of 187.2 m (615 ft.) with its highest elevation at 44.2 m (145 ft.) above the river. An unusual seven-degree alignment added to the magnificence of the structure. The fourty-six frame bents, positioned across the canyon at intervals of roughly 4.45 m (14.5 ft.), were held together with various longitudinal struts, diagonal bracing timbers and transverse diagonals. In the original design, a Howe truss, supported on timber towers, spanned the river at the top of the structure.

In 1922, CN launched a twice-daily passenger service from Victoria to Milne's Landing (Sooke) in a gas-powered car known as the "Galloping Goose". When the rails extended to Lake Cowichan, early passenger service to the lake consisted of a coach on the back of a freight train, twice a week. Cowichan Subdivision was finally complete in 1925, and CN established a daily passenger service to Youbou. However, by 1931, passenger traffic had dwindled and the company was losing money, so the service was suspended.

Freight service along the CN rail line continued to prosper, and several logging companies were established and mills built in the vicinity of the Kinsol Trestle. The Napier Lumber Company erected a sawmill at Mile 51 shortly after the trestle was built. The community of Napier consisted of an office, a cookhouse and several houses for workers. This enterprise was destroyed by fire in 1926. At Mile 53, W. Copeman constructed a mill at a railway siding known as Lakeshaw; this mill burned down in 1929. The operators re-established the business on a site near the old King Solomon Mine under the name Kinsol Lumber Company. The tiny community of Kinsol boasted its own post office (serving a population of about fifty people) and a small store. This mill succumbed to fire in August 1931. A few small-scale mills operated briefly in this area until a fire in 1944 consumed the remaining buildings at Napier and Kinsol. There are still remnants of another large logging camp at the south end of the trestle on private property. Also, just south of the trestle, is Kapoor Siding, where Kapoor Sawmills trucked its logs from the forest and loaded them onto trains. J.S. McKenzie, owner of another logging operation in the area, erected a gin pole (a device used to lift logs onto the train) next to this siding during World War II.

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A log train, CNR extra 2149, at mile 51.1
16 April 1958
Kinsol Trestle, Cowichan Valley, Vancouver Island, BC Canada


Credits:
David Wilkie, Photographer
Western Canadian Railway Association Archives

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To compete with the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway's (E&N) ability to quickly move their freight onto a barge for the mainland, CN built a spur line in 1925: the Tidewater Subdivision (Mile 59.9 to Mile 7.2), linked Deerholme with Cowichan Bay.

Flooding on the Koksilah River in the winter of 1931-32 brought rushing water and large trees hurtling down the river, and the trestle suffered extensive damage. During reconstruction in 1934, repairs were concentrated between bents 1 and 27. At the same time, design modifications put a shorter Howe truss span at the bottom of the structure. The 1934 truss, now resting on top of massive concrete piers, supports bents 12 through 20. In 1936, the section between bents 28 through 36 and the area above the truss underwent repairs. The original upper Howe truss was removed at this time and the space was filled in with normal frame bents. The north section was rebuilt in 1958, between bents 36 and 46. After that, repairs were sporadic and minimal.

As CN intended to abandon the line, their policy was to maintain, not rebuild. According to John Romak, former Bridge and Structures foreman for the CN Cowichan Subdivision, "In '58, they still had four bridge crews on the island, so somewhere in 1961, they figure well, we're going to abandon the island, no more maintenance, so we'll only need one crew."

By the 1960s, the forest industry on southern Vancouver Island was declining. CN continued to haul some freight over the trestle until 1979, even though regular service south of Deerholme was discontinued in 1975. In 1979, CN applied for and received permission to abandon the line between Mile 1.9 and 57.9. This included the Kinsol Trestle. To accommodate one last load over the Trestle, some repair work was done to the Trestle in 1979. CN then decommissioned the rail line in June of that year.
On June 20, 1979, the last train, a locomotive with four cars carrying cedar poles, crossed the trestle.

The CN officially abandoned that section of the Cowichan Subdivision on June 30, 1979.

AUDIO: Richard Pope
I was just in awe of it and I wish I had known at the time, in 1979, that I actually was watching the last train going over it. Had I known it, I would have definitely had my camera with me that time, but I didn't. I just thought it was going to be there forever...way, way back, Jack (Fleetwood) saw it as something unique and special, and he foresaw the end of it. As I said earlier, I wish I had, I wish I'd known that day that I saw the train go over it, whereas I think Jack saw that. He knew that its time was coming.

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Last locomotive crosses Trestle
20 June 1979
Kinsol Trestle, Cowichan Valley, Vancouver Island, BC Canada


Credits:
David Wilkie, Photographer
Western Canadian Railway Association Archives