The Eads Bridge         Source: http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu

Even as steamboats plied the waters of the Mississippi River off the shore of East St. Louis during the latter part of the nineteenth century, businessmen recognized the value of connecting East St. Louis and St. Louis by a bridge spanning the Mississippi.  As early as the 1820s, the promise of railroads offered land transportation free from the limits of America's great rivers. By the 1860s railroads proved to
A section of a 1920s Sanborn Fire Insurance Map showing the Illinois side of the Eads Bridge.  University of Illinois Library.
be a reliable means for transporting passengers and cargo.  Entrepreneurs on both sides of the Mississippi understood that a bridge would give railroads, carts, and pedestrians an easy way to cross the river.  A bridge would reduce delays for moving freight westward then caused by the need to stop trains in East St. Louis and transport goods across the river by ferry.  A bridge would further the capital growth these investors had already placed in the American Bottom region.  A bridge was the next step to securing St. Louis as permanent transportation point between the East Coast and the expanding west.

To learn more about building railroad bridges, go to the RiverWeb Archives and view excerpts from J.L. Ringwalt's 1888 book, The Development of Transportation Systems in the United States.

 

 

 

Bridging the Mississippi

Although engineers claimed a bridge joining East St. Louis and St. Louis was possible in the 1830s, no one launched a serious effort until after the Civil War.  A skeptical public and an economy weakened by war contributed to reluctance to invest in such an expensive venture.  However, in 1865 an Illinois company was formed to raise the capital for a bridge but was blocked by the powerful Wiggin's Ferry Company.  Wiggin's Ferry owned most of the East St. Louis waterfront on Bloody Island, the former sand bar that became the waterfront when the canal
Inventor, engineer, James B. Eads (1820-1887)
between it and East St. Louis was filled.  Along this property the ferry company launched numerous daily trips across the river in large steam powered ferry-boats.  The proposed bridge would be direct competition to the ferry service and the Wiggin's Ferry Company would try for years to block any such effort.

Successful in the effort to stop bridge development in East St. Louis, the Wiggin's Ferry Company could not stop the formation of the St. Louis and Illinois Bridge Company on the Missouri side in 1867.  The company hired James B. Eads, a former Union Navy officer and builder of iron-clad gunboats.  Eads was a skilled engineer and capable of designing and overseeing the construction of the formidable project.  Soon after the St. Louis and Illinois Bridge Company formed, an Illinois company formed and retained Chicago bridge contractor L. B. Boomer.  The Illinois company proposed a different design than the arch design James Eads planned.  Thus, a competition arose among the business elite of the region to gain the federal government's approval for constructing particular designs. 

 

 

 

 

Competing to span the river

During the 1860s rival companies formed to build a bridge between East St. Louis and St. Louis, spanning the Mississippi River.  With one company formed on the Missouri side and the other in Illinois the rivalry dealt with more than the type of bridge to be built.  State pride, the potential for local profit, and competing interests between ferry operators and rail transportation, fueled the competition.
An early drawing from the 1875 history of East St. Louis from Robert A. Tyson's History of East St. Louis (1875).

Realizing that someone would probably build a bridge, the Wiggin's Ferry Company, the owner of much of the East St. Louis waterfront and the largest ferry-boat operator, backed the Illinois company and its plan for a bridge that would be high enough to allow ferries to pass beneath it.  Previous to this support the Wiggin's Company opposed the building of a bridge, exercising significant political influence to keep the issue dead from its first mention in the 1830s.  Also joining the Illinois company was the city of East St. Louis and the Northern Line Packet Company, a conglomerate of steamboat, railroad, and merchant interests.  The river cities of Venice and Brooklyn, both near East St. Louis, also joined.
The Eads Bridge.

The construction rights would have to come from federal legislation.  During a brief, but volatile period, the rival companies competed for the right to build the bridge.  James Eads, the engineer hired by the Missouri company, advocated a plan in Washington that would build the bridge too low for ferries.  If his plan won, the ferry companies faced a quick end to their business.  However the Illinois company, supported by ferry operators, won the right to construct a bridge within a twenty-five year period.  With this victory the Illinois bridge company could charge St. Louis businesses tolls and limit the city's commerce, or they could sell the Wiggin's Ferry Company the rights to building the bridge and the ferry operator could delay a bridge for twenty-five years.  In either case the Illinois company believed they could garner substantial profits from the federally assigned building rights.

The Missouri company was not finished fighting and they generated another public battle over building the bridge.  The controversy went back to federal legislators.  Before any legislators could act, Eads, the chief engineer for the Missouri company, worked out a compromise and the two rival companies merged in 1867.

 

Building the Bridge

The construction of the Eads Bridge during the early 1870s.  Photograph courtesy the Missouri Historical Society.

During the 1860s companies from St. Louis and East St. Louis competed over the right to build a bridge across the Mississippi River.  After much debate and maneuvering, the companies compromised and merged.  Under the direction of James Eads, Andrew Carnegie's Keystone Bridge Company became the owner of the merged company and proceeded with plans to build an arch bridge that would have railroad tracks and a wagon road, or carriage highway, as it was called.

Building the Eads Bridge was an enormous undertaking.  First channel piers that would support the bridge had to be built in the river.  Using water tight chambers called caissons, workers excavated the alluvial river bottom until they reached bedrock.  The channel piers were built on the bedrock.  A tornado in 1871 caused some damage to construction, although it damaged Bloody Island more severely, sweeping the rail yards and lifting twenty-five ton locomotives and scattering them.  By 1872 workers completed the channel piers and the approach arches on either side of the bridge.  Workers extended the arches over the water until the two halves of each arch met in the middle.  During 1873 workers completed the upper level carriage highway and the lower level double railroad tracks.  The bridge opened in 1874 and the first train crossed on June 9, 1874.

 

The Eads Bridge competes with the ferries

 

Before the Eads Bridge the Wiggin's Ferry Company treated passengers poorly.  Travelers were of secondary importance to the Company whose stock and trade was transporting freight, rail cars, and wagons.  The completion of the bridge allowed people to walk across without the inconvenience they faced on a ferry.  To counter the competition Wiggin's Ferry made passengers a new priority.  They purchased a 54 ton passenger ferry, the D.W. Hewitt, capable of carrying one hundred passengers.
Laclede's Landing - On the Eads bridge between 1st and 2nd streets.
The Company dropped their passenger rate from a dime per person to a nickel.  Covered waiting accommodations sprang up on Wiggin's landings and the Company advertised heavily to attract patrons.  The bridge company met the challenge by offering ice water and music concerts along the bridge.

Pedestrian traffic was not the major point of competition.  Rather, it was the freight business.  The ferry companies maintained their hold for fifteen years after the bridge opened because the bridge company had to build transfer and terminal facilities for railroad traffic.  In 1874 the Union Railway Company of Illinois was incorporated to provide locomotives for train transportation across the bridge and to operate the terminals.

 

 

 

 

Wiggin's Ferry Company last active years

The Eads Bridge offered two sets of rail tracks for the Union Railway Company of Illinois to operate in the business of transferring freight across the Mississippi River.  Before the bridge could handle the rail traffic terminals and transfer points had to be built on both sides of the river.  Building the facilities took almost fifteen years.  During that time freight continued to be shipped by ferry services like the Wiggins Ferry Company.  However, the company was surviving on borrowed time, because once operational, the bridge could transfer greater amounts of freight in less time.

In the first years of operation the Eads Bridge failed to attract enough business to operate.  In 1875 the bridge was bankrupt and in 1878 the St. Louis Bridge Company purchased the bridge at public auction for $2 million.  In 1880 the notorious Jay Gould, ever interested in his railroad holdings received the bridge under one of his holdings.

Nevertheless, the Wiggin's Company did what it could to survive.  In 1885 it leased the Madison County Ferry from the East St. Louis Transfer Company.  With the greater capacity it gained and the pressure from the bridge, the company lowered its freight rates from nine cents per hundred pounds to five cents, matching the bridge rate.  As a further incentive the ferry service offered a barrel of whiskey to regular freight patrons.  These moves secured almost all of the railroad freight transfer business for the Wiggin's Company.  Meanwhile Jay Gould was consolidating his control over the Eads Bridge.  He established an "arbitrary" or a monopoly on bridge traffic and the rates he could charge for use of the bridge.  In 1886 the St. Louis Merchants Exchange launched plans to build the Merchants Bridge to break the Gould monopoly.  The Merchants Bridge opened in 1890 but survived only three years before a lack of services and accessibility ran the bridge into bankruptcy.

Within four years of Wiggins Ferry Company's lower freight rates Gould struck the ferry service a hard blow when he finished the St. Louis terminal facilities and formed the Terminal Railroad Association in 1889.  Railroads participating in the Association included the Wabash Railroad, the Cleveland, Chicago, Cincinnati, Missouri Pacific, the St. Louis, the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad, and the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad.  The TRRA proved the winner in the bridge competition when it purchased the Merchants Bridge and its debt in 1893.

In 1896 the Wiggin's Ferry Company had only one-third of the business it held in 1882.  In the same year a tornado struck the area and destroyed large parts of St. Louis and East St. Louis.  The Wiggin's Company lost five ferry-boats, all of their wharf, and all of their facilities on Bloody Island.  However, the Company persisted and continued to compete with the Eads Bridge.  Part of the ferry company's survival came from outside interests like the Rock Island Railroad that was not part of the Terminal Railroad Association and sought a means to transfer freight into St. Louis.  In 1902 the Rock Island Railroad attempted to buy Wiggin's Ferry Company to secure an entrance to the city, but the Terminal Railroad Association admitted Rock Island and then purchased Wiggin's Ferry Company through its subsidiary the Mercantile Company, to prevent a similar scenario in the future.  After the Terminal Railroad Association made the Wiggin's Company a wholly owned subsidiary the ferry operation continued to transfer freight until 1930.

 

Source: http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu

 

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