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The Eads Bridge
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,
business men 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 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.
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.
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