Forgotten Hoosiers by Fred D. Cavinder

Author:Fred D. Cavinder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2013-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

The bridge over the Mississippi at St. Louis, shown here under construction, was completed by James Eads, though some said that it was impossible.

Cables installed to carry the arches into place proved a problem, solved when Eads found that it was the temperature that affected them. Over all obstacles, the bridge was completed, with a center span of 520 feet, using fabricated steel made to Eads’s harsh specifications. Pedestrians crossed it on Sunday, May 24, 1874, cars in June; the official opening was July 4, 1874. A total of fourteen men died in the construction. But it was, most agreed, “the greatest engineering feat of that sort,” known today as the Eads Bridge. Forgotten were the attempts that Congress made to scuttle the bridge and continual objections by the army, which had charge of rivers. Scientific American urged Eads for president.

“The love of praise is, I believe, common to all men, and whether it be a frailty or a virtue, I plead no exception from its fascination,” Eads told the bulging crowd that packed St. Louis when the bridge opened. Onlookers included President Ulysses S. Grant.

The accomplished engineer, who had proven his theories, was not through with the Mississippi yet. Eads now proposed to open its delta at New Orleans by a novel method so oceangoing vessels would not have to wait for high tide to reach the city.

“I shall certainly open the mouth of your river,” said Eads. His proposal to use jetties was ridiculed by some. “I will give the Mississippi River…a deep, open, safe and permanent outlet to the sea,” said Eads in May 1875. With approval from Congress, work began on “the most difficult piece of engineering in river hydraulics which the world has ever seen.”

Eads’s aim was to make willow mattresses that would fill naturally with silt. This, he said, would increase the current and force unwanted silt out to sea. Eads invented equipment to help produce these jetties. When the jetties were completed in 1879 after four years of work, the cost of $5,250,000 was half the estimated cost of bypass canals that had been proposed.

Now Eads had earned the plaudits of the world. He became a consulting engineer for the State of California in July 1879. Others wanted jetties to clear streams. Eads got requests from around the world to inspect rivers and improve their mouths. His papers, addresses and communications to Congress and to technical magazines, newspapers and societies became valuable for their insights into improving rivers. By 1872, he had nine patents. The University of Missouri gave him an LLD degree. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Eads turned to a new challenge. When the Panama Canal Congress was held, Eads offered a plan to carry boats across the isthmus by rail instead of the proposed tidewater canal. His perpetual foes labeled the rail idea foolhardy and unworkable.

Undeterred, by 1880 Eads obtained permission from Mexico to build his ship-rail at Tehauntepec, the shortest route across the 135-mile isthmus and close to New Orleans, now an important port because of his river-clearing jetties.

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