Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

Jan 18, 2007

History Nuggets: The Eads Bridge

From the steps beneath the huge St. Louis Arch, the Eads Bridge can be seen reaching out gracefully across the Mississippi to Illinois. It separates west from east, and was designed to let trains through and ensure that St. Louis retained it power as a trading hub well into the future. The largest bridge in the world at the time of its official dedication on July 4th 1874, it was also the first bridge to use steel and cantilevered construction. The two outer spans are 500 feet long, and the central one is a whole twenty feet longer. The piers are made from limestone and are anchored down into the bedrock.

The structure was a combination road and railway bridge; these days carries the light rail of St. Louis. By the time its cornerstone was laid in 1878, so many restrictions had been put on its design, so much politicking was done, that it was claimed this project could not be completed. Yet Captain James Buchanan Eads, engineer extraordinaire, danced between the flutters of red tape and made it happen anyway. He created a thing of beauty that, when it was opened officially, was fêted with a fifteen mile long parade, fireworks, speeches–in short, a party of the kind that Americans do so very well. There was even an inaugural train ride, even though trains had been already been passing along it for nearly a month.

In April of the very next year, however, the Keystone Bridge Company, builder of the bridge, went bankrupt. There were delays in the income they expected from paying passenger trains, and it finished them off. At the end of 1878 the structure was sold at auction for a whole two million dollars–a great deal less than the cost to actually build it. In 1974 the last Amtrak train rolled across the river, and piece by piece the poor old bridge fell into disrepair. It was closed entirely in 1991, seemingly doomed. But in 1993 the city’s new light rail started to use the lower deck, once the terrain of great trains, and a huge renovation was finally completed in 2003 with the upper deck open to road and foot traffic. It’s a good job too: the Eads Bridge, originally named the St. Louis Bridge, is a thing of beauty, and not a structure to be abandoned lightly.

Now, you can walk on it, and a special path for pedestrians and cyclists gives an unrivaled view of the St. Louis skyline. I did not have that opportunity, since at the time I visited St. Louis I had a badly strained ankle and limping across to Illinois was not on my itinerary. Yet it is spectacular, and it is elegant, and I intend some day to return.

The Eads Bridge was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

The Eads Bridge