Three long ribbed spans stride across the Mississippi on heavy stone piers just upriver, the oldest crossing still in service on this reach of water. It opened on Independence Day in 1874 as the first bridge ever to span the river this far south, and it was among the earliest major structures anywhere framed largely in steel rather than iron. Its creator had never built a bridge in his life; he had earned his fortune walking the river bottom in a diving bell to salvage sunken wrecks, so he understood the current from below. Skeptics swore arches this long in steel would fall, so a circus elephant was led across the deck to prove it safe. Today cars still cross the upper level and trains run beneath.
Pick out the bridge just north of here — three long arches striding across the brown water on heavy stone piers. That's the Eads Bridge, and to an engineer's eye it might be the most remarkable thing in view, the Arch included. A self-taught riverman named James Buchanan Eads built it, a man who had never put up a single bridge in his life. He had made his money walking the bottom of this river in a diving bell, salvaging sunken wrecks, so he knew the Mississippi from the mud up. When he finally spanned it here, he did it with three great ribbed arches and some of the first real steel ever trusted to a major bridge — most everyone still built in iron, and the doubters swore steel arches this long would never hold. They opened it on the Fourth of July, eighteen seventy-four, the first bridge ever to cross the Mississippi this far south. To prove it safe, they led an elephant out across the deck, because folks knew an elephant wouldn't set foot on anything it didn't trust. A century and a half on, it still carries traffic up top and trains down below — one of the oldest working bridges on the whole river. But the grace of those arches hides what it cost to plant them. To reach bedrock under all that moving water, Eads's men had to go down into the dark, into the very air turned against them — and that tale belongs to Boone. Stay on the path here, off the grass.
Photo: Chuck Morris · CC BY-SA 3.0
