Umtanum Creek Footbridge in Ellensburg, Washington

Yakima (pronounced "YAK-uh-maw") Canyon, where the Yakima River traverses a water gap through Manastash Ridge, is an obvious thoroughfare and was used by Native Americans for thousands of years, and then by Euro-American trappers and settlers into the 19th century. It was also an obvious route for a railroad, and the Northern Pacific Railway was built through it in the early 1880s, along the west bank of the river. (The railroad is still in active use and is now part of the BNSF system.) Railroading was an extremely labor-intensive business well into the 20th century, and camps were built a...