During the early years of the twentieth century, logging companies exploited much of the native timber of New Zealand.

The Marlborough Timber Company, one of the country's largest forestry companies, was looking for new areas of forest to mill, and managed to secure the logging rights to an inhospitable and difficult to access area of timber close to Te Waewae Bay in the island's southwestern corner.

Coupled with falling timber prices (due to the improvement of access between the South Island's cities and the heavily forested West Coast with the completion of the Otira Tunnel), the Port Craig operation was quickly in trouble and was abandoned in 1928, just as maximum timber production had been achieved.

Further restoration work was undertaken jointly by the Department of Conservation, Southland District Council and the Port Craig Viaducts Trust in the mid-2010s.

[4] Its fate was unknown until February 2014 when the Department of Conservation and Environment Southland pledged NZ$480,000 to restore it and the other three viaducts on the former logging rail line.