The La Salle Causeway is literally falling apart!  Does the City of Kingston really want to buy this wreck from the feds for a buck? I hope not.

Right under our tires, the marine environment is ripping the causeway to pieces.  Sure, we can all see the surface rust, and the filiform corrosion (any rust between the metal and a coating, such as paint) blistering its umpteenth coat of paint off.  But that's largely superficial and doesn't steal the bridge's strength.  It's the crevice and pack rust we found under the deck that's far more serious.

Falling apart or not, the Causeway is a crucial part of the Kingston area infrastructure.   It is critical to getting into the City from the east side.

The La Salle Causeway is almost a hundred years old.  It was a modern engineering marvel when built around the turn of the century, and has served the City of Kingston well for nearly a hundred years.  It's so old that its first users included horse drawn carriages and wagons.

The Causeway was designed and built decades before anyone thought of spreading salt on the highways.  This started in the 1950's.  Prior to that, only sand was used as a traction aid.  In fact, there was little or no rusting of automobiles reported prior to the 1950's--and no salt, no acid rain either. Coincidence?

Snow plowing and snow removal was uncommon at the turn of the century.  It was more usual to pack the snow down hard and simply walk or drive slowly on the hard packed snow surface.  The open deck of the bridge would allow the snow to be pushed through. 

This July, 2004, Professor Pierre Roberge and I inspected the underside of the Causeway in my wooden rowboat.  I rowed, and the Professor took the photos.  This little rowboat rides low in the water and  permitted us to get up close and personal with the bridge's secrets.

What we saw shocked even jaded rust hunters such as ourselves.