Tekoa trestle Christmas lights go up with State Parks approval

Garth Meyer, Gazette Reporter | Dec 13, 20180

--Fred Wagner photo count

Tekoa's Ivan Mercer gets started on the Christmas lights Tuesday afternoon at the top of the trestle. It is the fifth year for lighting the trestle, which is now sponsored by Friends of the Tekoa Trestle.

Tekoa volunteers Fred Wagner and Ivan Mercer put up the first section of Christmas lights on the Tekoa Trestle Tuesday.

Turned away because of weather after stringing up 200 feet of lights and a wreath, the two men were set to start again Wednesday, weather permitting.

Their work is an effort by Friends of the Tekoa Trestle (FTTT), and permitted by Washington State Parks, which owns the decommissioned trestle.

This is the fifth year of what has become a Tekoa tradition.

"We have full legality, we have a permit," Wagner, secretary for FTTT, said on Monday. "Right now it looks like a go for the next couple of days."

Issues to work out this year included where to plug in extension cords. A resident near the trestle has agreed to provide the hook up this year.

State Parks will allow for lights to be up Dec. 1-31, with leeway granted into January to take them down. Putting them up, the permit requires the volunteers to use safety harnesses and cables, for which a set of two were borrowed from new Tekoa mayor Troy Wilson, who is employed by Century Link.

Mercer, a former lineman for GTE in the Coeur d'Alene area, moved to Tekoa five years ago after he retired.

"We're gonna have a lot of happy people when we get the lights up," Wagner said.

Last year a controversy ensued when volunteers from the then-Tekoa Trestle and Trail Association put lights on the trestle before they had secured a permit.