Qualla: Kinsol Trestle

Kinsol Trestle: Introduction

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Dra8ton, CC BY-SA 3.0. The mine it is named for produced three rail cars' worth of ore. Between 1924 and 1927, the King Solomon Mines - a name that promised rather more than it delivered - pulled 254 tonnes of rock out of the ground near the Koksilah River, yielding about 18 tonnes of copper and roughly six kilograms of silver before the venture gave up. A nearby railway stop took the shortened name Kinsol, and the enormous wooden bridge beside it inherited it. The trestle has nothing to do with mining. It was never built to serve those workings, despite a persistent local belief otherwise. It stands 44 metres above the river and runs 188 metres across - the largest wooden trestle in the Commonwealth of Nations and among the tallest railway trestles anywhere - and it is named after one of the least productive holes ever dug on Vancouver Island.

Read more: Kinsol Trestle on Qualla

Image: User:Dra8ton | CC BY-SA 3.0

Kinsol Trestle: A Railway to Nootka Sound

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit jayscratch, CC BY-SA 2.0. The real ambition was timber. By 1911 logging had taken hold on Vancouver Island, and moving old-growth trees to tidewater by oxen and skid road had become the bottleneck. The Canadian Northern Pacific Railway began pushing a line intended to run from Victoria through Cowichan La...

Read more: Kinsol Trestle on Qualla

Image: jayscratch | CC BY-SA 2.0

Kinsol Trestle: Curved Timber

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Baer, CC BY-SA 2.0. What makes the Kinsol unusual among big trestles is that it does not go straight. The structure carries a seven-degree curve across its entire span, a demanding piece of geometry to execute in wood, where every bent must be set and braced to follow an arc rather than a line. The ...

Read more: Kinsol Trestle on Qualla

Image: Richard Baer | CC BY-SA 2.0

Kinsol Trestle: The Argument Over Demolition

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit L i z a b e t, CC BY-SA 3.0. Canadian National abandoned its Vancouver Island rail service in the 1980s, and the right of way passed to the provincial Ministry of Transportation. The trestle then spent two decades rotting. By the 2000s it was closed to walkers and cyclists, flagged as both an environmental l...

Read more: Kinsol Trestle on Qualla

Image: L i z a b e t | CC BY-SA 3.0

Kinsol Trestle: Eighty Percent Sound

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dra8ton at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. At that meeting, a timber-framing firm from nearby Cobble Hill made an unexpected case. Macdonald & Lawrence was local in address and decidedly not local in reputation - a company that had built unusual structures across Britain, received a commendation from Queen Elizabeth for i...

Read more: Kinsol Trestle on Qualla

Image: Dra8ton at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Kinsol Trestle: Five Point Seven Million

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vrsmith, CC BY-SA 3.0. The regional district voted overwhelmingly to proceed, commissioning Commonwealth Historic Resource Management with Macdonald & Lawrence to deliver a full restoration plan, which arrived in November 2008. Public money covered part of the roughly $5.7 million cost; a community cam...

Read more: Kinsol Trestle on Qualla

Image: Vrsmith | CC BY-SA 3.0