Landmark bridge gave Rainy River its name

Ken Johnston
Editor

For 102 years trains have been travelling through Rainy River, a town that received its name because of a bridge.
When one says “The International Bridge at Rainy River and Baudette,” most people automatically think of the automobile bridge which opened in the early 1960s. But the first international bridge here was actually the railway bridge.
Two men, William MacKenzie and Donald Mann, saw an opportunity in the federal government’s efforts to open up western Canada to development in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They began by constructing a line in Manitoba from Portage la Prairie to Dauphin. When that was completed they bought 645 km of track running west from Thunder Bay towards Winnipeg. However, that route had a major obstacle. The Rainy River needed to be overcome.
In 1899 MacKenzie, Mann and Company hired The American Bridge Company to build the bridge that would link its east and west lines together. By 1900 it was well underway and in 1901 it was completed. With foresight and vision, MacKenzie and Mann had surveyed, in 1899, a great deal of their land holdings in Atwood Township where the Rainy River town site is located today. However it was not until they built a station where it is today that the town started to grow where it is now. Prior to that most people were living near the bridge in a town called Beaver Mills where some 200,000 board feet per day were produced by about 200 men in the summer and another 30 in the planing department year round.
As the bridge was being constructed to span the Rainy River all the materials were way-billed to Rainy River, not Beaver Mills. For obvious reasons that point on the Canadian Northern Railway was deemed Rainy River. As the rails became busy, the survey work of MacKenzie and Mann turned into a thriving community that was incorporated as Rainy River on December 9, 1903 with 750 acres taken from Atwood Township.
Stories about the construction of the bridge had a great deal of the work taking place in the cold winter months when the ice allowed materials and equipment to be hauled to the necessary places on the river. One account in Marg Thompson’s book, Rainy River, Our Town, Our Lives, said, “The crew of an engine that made the crossing on nature’s bridge (the ice) walked the Canadian shore leaving the engine pilotless across the river, then leaping aboard when it reached terra firma.”
Barges were used when the ice went out and one report said that one of them loaded with railway ties reportedly sunk at the mouth of Miller’s Creek and the Rainy River and still lies at the bottom today.
The center span of the bridge was built to turn on the center piling to allow larger boats to pass by. At that time there were no highways and few if any cars to travel by. Travel occurred mostly by boat down the river and across Lake of the Woods. A crew manned the turning motor shack at the top of the bridge whenever necessary.
No one can remember when the last time the bridge was turned but in the early 1990s the support pilings that ran north and south of the east to west bridge were removed by CNR. Some old timers recall that it took quite some time for the span to turn fully, but that it was impressive to see.
As highways opened up and rail travel became common, travel by big boats diminished and turning the bridge became a rare happening.
Some folks have said that cars used to drive across the train bridge on occasion but for the most part took a ferry across the river in the summer and the ice in the winter. Pedestrians often walked the bridge prior to the auto bridge opening.