On April 22, 1856, the citizens of Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa, cheered as they watched three steam locomotives pull eight passenger cars safely across the newly completed Chicago and Rock Island (C&RI) Railroad Bridge that spanned over the Mississippi River. Indeed – a historic day in Iowa history!
Read what the The Iowa State Democrat had to say about all this…
As we discuss on another post, earlier that same year – on January 3, 1856 – the good people of Iowa City celebrated the first passenger train to run from Davenport to Iowa City. The Mississippi & Missouri (M&M) steam engine – The Oskaloosa – rolled into Iowa’s capital city, pulling seven passenger cars filled with those who had boarded the C&RI train in Chicago the day before. Arriving in Rock Island, the party-goers spent the night of January 2nd there, and early the next morning, ferried across the Mississippi to Davenport, boarded the M&M train there, and finally, arrived in Iowa City in the late afternoon of January 3rd! Whew – quite the trip!
But now – as of April 22, 1856, the first railroad bridge across the Mississippi was open for business! Now, the people of eastern Iowa could travel non-stop – reaching New York City by rail in no more than forty-two hours!
This historic day – April 22, 1856 – in Iowa history actually had its beginnings fifty years earlier. In 1805, after President Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark on their expedition up the Missouri River into the newly-purchased Louisiana Territory, he also sent Lieutenant Zebulon Pike up the Mississippi River to gather data and determine strategic sites for American forts. Read more here.
On his way north – leaving St. Louis in August 1805 and returning in April 1806 – Pike spent a total of 34 days identifying important sites in and around what is today – Iowa. In late August 1805, as Lt. Pike and his team were about 350 miles – via the river – north of St. Louis, one large island stood out as being a perfect place to build a fort.
This large island in the Mississippi River was located very near the expansive Sauk village of Saukenuk, and the Sauk War Chief Black Hawk – who cordially welcomed Pike and his men to camp in the area – said this about that special island in his 1834 biography…
This [island] was the best one on the Mississippi, and had long been the resort of our young people during the summer. It was our garden, like the white people have near their big villages, which supplied us with strawberries, blackberries, gooseberries, plums, apples and nuts of different kinds. Being situated at the foot of the rapids, its waters supplied us with the finest fish. In my early life I spent many happy days on this island. A good spirit had charge of it, which lived in a cave in the rocks immediately under the place where the fort now stands. This guardian spirit has often been seen by our people. It was white, with large wings like a swan’s, but ten times larger. We were particular not to make much noise in that part of the island which it inhabited, for fear of disturbing it. But the noise at the fort has since driven it away, and no doubt a bad spirit has taken its place.
As you can read from Black Hawk’s words written in 1834, the United States did eventually claim this beautiful island as their own, reserving it for military use in 1809 and naming it Rock Island.
Strategically, this large island that Black Hawk loved was, not only, the perfect place to build a fort, but it was also the easiest place to cross the wide Mississippi River. As you can see from the map (above left) Rock Island not only physically breaks up the vast wideness of the Mississippi, but it is also part of the Rock Island Rapids (see above right) where the Great River separates into smaller, less deep channels, making a crossing much easier – especially during the winter months. Interestingly, this type of natural bridge spanning across a large body of water is described in the Sauk/Fox tongue – the language of Chief Black Hawk – as “kiowa” – meaning “this is the place where we can cross over.” Read more about how Iowa got her name here.
After the War of 1812, Fort Armstrong was built here at the foot of Rock Island, near the present-day Quad Cities of Illinois and Iowa. Made of stone and timber, the 300 feet square fort was begun in May 1816 and completed the following year.
Garrisoned by two companies of United States Army, in 1832, Fort Armstrong became the military headquarters during the Black Hawk War, and was the site of the signing of the Black Hawk Purchase – 6 million acres of land located directly west of the Great River. By 1835, this vast area of prairie – known to Black Hawk as “kiowa” – now became known to the white man as the Iowa District of Wisconsin Territory – with new communities springing up all along the Mississippi.
As we discuss on another post, from 1823 – when the first steamboat (The Virginia) traveled from St. Louis to St. Anthony, Minnesota – until the early 1860’s, traveling westward into Iowa meant going south by steamboat on the Ohio River to St. Louis and then north on the Mississippi to new Iowa communities such as Ft. Madison, Burlington, Bloomington (Muscatine), Davenport, Lyons (Clinton), or Dubuque.
But all this changed drastically in 1854, when the Chicago and Rock Island (C&RI) Railroad was finally completed under the direction of Henry Farnam and his partner Joseph Sheffield, becoming the first railroad to connect the East – via Chicago – with the Mississippi River. The map (above) shows the completion dates at various points along the route westward from Chicago to Rock Island. Read more about the earliest days of railroads in Iowa.
As we mentioned earlier, Rock Island earned its significance by being one of the easiest places to cross the vast Mississippi River. And it was this fact alone that forced the C&RI to chose this specific route as it was attempting to be the first American railroad to reach the Pacific Ocean. You see, in the early 1850’s, the California Gold Rush had pressed the accelerator on America’s hunger for a transcontinental railroad. And while the major rivers of the U.S. – the Ohio & the Mississippi – had been the primary highway of the early 1800’s, now the iron horse – running westward from Chicago – could go places no steamboat could ever hope to go.
So, in the the rush to go west, in 1853, two major things in Iowa happened…
In Chicago in May 1853, two business men from Iowa City were sent to the C&RI Board Meetings, commissioned by our fair city to twist some arms while sweetening the deal just a bit. Iowa City’s LeGrand Byington and William Penn Clarke offered M&M Railroad – which was working in Iowa alongside the C&RI – a $50,000 bonus – payable to M&M with two conditions – 1) Iowa City becomes M&M’s primary destination out of Davenport, and 2) M&M completes the 55-mile track into Iowa City on or before January 1, 1856. Read more here.
In order to unite these two railroad lines – the C&RI of Illinois and the M&M of Iowa – it was necessary to form a new corporation that would be given recognition and empowerment in both states. So, in 1853, the Railroad Bridge Company was incorporated and authorized to “build, maintain, and use a railroad bridge over the Mississippi River … in such a manner as shall not materially obstruct or interfere with the free navigation of said river.” Proponents of the project, of course, touted Rock Island as an ideal location for the bridge as it provided a direct rail link between New York City, the Mississippi Valley, and the Far West.
Project engineers – drawing from an 1837 topographical survey by Lt. Robert E. Lee (see below) and other surveys – deemed the site of Rock Island ideal, so construction of the new bridge started on July 16, 1853, and lasted for nearly three years. The construction involved three sections—a bridge across a narrow portion of the Mississippi between the Illinois shore and Rock Island, a line of tracks across Rock Island, and the long bridge between the island and the Iowa shore.
Below – The Howe Truss design of the bridge was distinguished by long wooden arches, anchored to the piers on either side of each fixed span. The bridge was made primarily of wood and had five fixed spans, each with a flat top and each 250 feet long. The draw, or swing, span was 286 feet long and located near the middle of the river. At the time it was the longest swing span in the world.
So, after nearly three years of construction, the first railroad bridge over the Mississippi River was ready to go. And as we said earlier, the next day – April 22, 1856 – it all happened!
On the morning of May 6, 1856, just fifteen days after the Rock Island Railroad Bridge opened, the steamboat Effie Afton crashed into the bridge, causing one span of the bridge and the boat to burn. The accident was considered a bit suspicious, with some believing the steamboat industry – which stood to lose a lot of business to the railroads – pre-planned the “accident.” The legal case surrounding the incident went to court, eventually making it all the way to the Supreme Court, with a lawyer from Springfield, IL, one Abraham Lincoln, representing the railroads along the way. Historian William H. Thompson tells us more…
In a series of court cases, steamboat interests claimed that the bridge was an impediment to navigation, and In the most famous of these cases, Hurd et al. v. Railroad Bridge Company, a young Abraham Lincoln defended the railroad in September 1857. The case concluded with a hung jury, allowing the railroad to continue using the bridge.
Once the Civil War started, the bridge became an important component in the Union Army’s war effort – remaining in place until replaced by an updated bridge in 1866.
Here’s a big salute to the very first bridge of any kind over the Mississippi River – a bridge to never be forgotten! Here’s to the Rock Island Railroad Bridge!
Kudos to the amazing resources below for the many quotes, photographs, etc. used on this page.
Railroads In Iowa, The Iowa State Democrat, April 7, 1856, p 2
Fort Armstrong (Illinois), Wikipedia
Misc. graphics, 1851 Iowa Township Map Info, Iowa Dept of Transportation
Hurd v. Rock Island Bridge Co., Wikipedia
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