Trivia Tuesday, June 16

Last week's answer

Question: When building the Going-to-the-Sun Road along the sheer cliffs of the Continental Divide, engineers faced a massive logistical challenge: what to do with millions of tons of blasted rock. Instead of dumping the debris down the mountain — which would destroy the pristine forests below — how did the builders handle the excavated material?

Answer: They crushed the debris on-site and utilized it to masonry-face the retaining walls, bridges, and guardrails, blending the highway into the natural landscape.

The landscape required contractors to use numerous small blasts of explosives, as large blasts would destroy the area. Landscape architects from the National Park Service wanted the road to blend in with the surrounding environment, and therefore the excavated material was used to for the bridges, retaining walls and guardrails along the roadway. Along certain points of the construction, laborers needed to remove excavated rock by hand, as power equipment was nonfeasible. 

Sources: National Park Service