Vancouver Land Bridge reconnects a river to a people, a past

STROLLING OVER the top of Highway 14 might not be a typical fall outing, but the Vancouver Land Bridge is worth the drive south. It's a feat of engineering and a historical-restoration project all in one wide arc of an overpass.

Designer Johnpaul Jones seems to have almost massaged the landscape, pulling it up and over the railway tracks and highway to connect Fort Vancouver with the Columbia River waterfront. "Like in the old days, you can now walk from the river to the fort and back," says Jones, of Jones and Jones in Seattle.

The land bridge is one unique site among seven in artist Maya Lin's decade-long Confluence Project that traces 450 miles of Lewis and Clark's famed exploratory route West. From foggy coastal forests to arid desert on the Idaho border, Lin has worked with artists, architects, Indian tribes, civic leaders and volunteers to heal degraded landscapes. Art and history come alive at every project along the route.

"Maya's instincts are spot on," says Confluence Project executive director Jane Jacobsen. "She helps you look at places differently." The $27 million project, funded by federal, state and private monies, is due for completion in 2010. The Vancouver Land Bridge, dedicated in August 2008 and costing $12.25 million, is perhaps the project's most spectacular accomplishment.

Northwest history converges with art and landscape at the bridge, offering up a visceral experience of our own unique past. Lewis and Clark camped at one end of the bridge, where Fort Vancouver was built 20 years later. This Hudson's Bay Company outpost was the center of trade from Mexico to Alaska, and a place for Europeans to mingle with Native Americans.

The National Park Service had been trying for years to create a walkway to the river as part of its master plan for Fort Vancouver. Now the connection — interrupted for a hundred years by the railroad and then the highway — has been quite literally bridged. Jones designed a 40-foot-wide, earth-covered pedestrian overpass that appears more organic than engineered.

Ints Luters of Jones and Jones explained just how complicated a project it was. There's an airport nearby, so the bridge couldn't be too high or interfere with flight patterns. The height and spread of plants needed to be considered for sightlines as well as weight. "The load of soil and water added to the complexity of the engineering."

Year-round, visitors enjoy images of basketry, interpretive panels and a welcome gate designed by Native American artist Lillian Pitt. The iconic native landscape ebbs and flows throughout the year; color peaks when the blue camas lilies bloom in May, but for the next month or so vine maples and native shrubbery are in full autumn glory. Jones and Jones designed microclimates for a variety of native-plant communities, including woodlands, prairies and grasslands.

Jones hopes that people will be so submerged in plantings they won't notice the highway. "It's not a total immersion yet . . . but it will be," says Jones, who intriguingly describes his design as "revealing what used to be there."

I couldn't resist asking Jones what it's like to collaborate with Maya Lin, who won fame by designing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. She doesn't do anything halfway, Jones says. "She's really creative, and short on patience because she's so intense about what she does . . . she gets her point across through her art."

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer. Check out her blog at www.valeaston.com.