The Palimpsest

Mansheim, Gerald

William Steele's Silent Music

Smith, Thomas S

English

A Martyr for Prohibition: The Murder of Reverend George C Haddock

Atwood, Roy Alden

Iowa's Handwritten Newspapers

Bowers, Martha

SPANNING THE MISSOURI
“Is it possible that the fable of Aladdin and 
his lamp is no longer a fable but a fact? It 
must be so,’’ declared the toastmaster. “The 
bridge is there, an arch of steel spanning the 
mighty Missouri — how was it done? — it 
seems like a miracle." On this frigid January 
evening in 1896, A. W. Erwin's happy listen­
ers were inclined to agree with him. Sioux 
City’s new Pacific Short Line Bridge, which 
had opened for traffic a few hours earlier, 
seemed less the work of men than the gift of a 
genie. Begun in 1889, the bridge’s construc­
tion had proved to be a study in frustration, 
and after six years of false starts, law suits, 
and business failures, many Sioux Citians 
had pinned their hopes for its completion on 
the supernatural.
The completed bridge was a peerless engi­
neering triumph. The second of two spans
built to carrv railroad traffic across the¥
Missouri Biver at Sioux City, the Pacific Short 
Line Bridge rested originally on the rather 
fragile financial schemes of one Donald 
McLean, a railroad adventurer with an un­
canny ability to “get capital.’’ Although his 
capital eventually proved to exist mostly on 
paper, McLean wooed local businessmen 
with a package deal that would not only open
the territory of northern Nebraska to com-¥
mercial development by Sioux City firms, but 
also provide them with a direct rail line to 
Salt Lake City and the Pacific Coast. To John 
Peirce and other investors, still smarting over 
the routing of the transcontinental railroad 
through rival Council Bluffs back in 1868, the 
possibilities afforded by McLean’s scheme 
outweighed any concerns they may have had 
about his reputation.
Progress on the bridge was rapid at first.
^  Iowa State Historical Department/Division of the State 
Historical Society 1981 0031—0036 0102—0014 $1.00
Soundings and engineering surveys began in 
the fall of 1889, soon after the incorporation 
of the Pacific Short Line Company. At the 
same time, the PSL erected a temporary rail­
road bridge to carry construction materials
across to the Nebraska side. Bv the summer
¥
of 1890, contracts were awarded to Soov- 
smith and Company and the Phoenix Bridge 
Company to execute designs by James A. L. 
Waddell, Phoenix’s western agent. Plans 
called for a low bridge featuring draw spans 
at either end, with approaches at First Street 
in Sioux City and in South Sioux City, Neb­
raska. It would be a “combination bridge,’’ 
meaning simply that it would bear horse and 
pedestrian as well as railroad and streetcar 
traffic, all on one level (see the drawing on 
page 17).
Although speed was to have been a hall­
mark of the project, in the fall of 1890 — 
with the first pier caisson ready to be sunk — 
the delays began. In November the Sioux Ci­
ty Journal reported that McLean was in 
financial trouble; in December he was 
broke. Construction ceased. Following 
months of negotiations arranged by Sioux 
City’s A. S. Garretson, the builders resumed 
work in May 1891, but by August the reor­
ganized company was in trouble again. \\ ith 
George Wickersham, Garretson this time 
bought the company outright — for $2 mil­
lion — but was unable to send the builders 
back to work until December 1892. Their 
rapid progress through the winter months 
suddenly halted in April 1893 when flood- 
waters destroyed a tramway connecting two 
bridge piers. Financial calamity followed 
natural disaster within days; on April 28 
Garretson announced that his company had 
succumbed to the national business panic 
triggered by agricultural depression, mone-
With two swing spans and a 1,900-feet 
reach, Sioux City's Combination Bridge 
is a triumph of nineteenth-century 
engineering skill. To the people who 
paid for it, however, the bridge's com­
pletion in 1896 more likely represented 
a triumph of civic endurance.
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16 The Palimpsest
James A. L. Waddell, chief engineer 
and designer of the Pacific Short Line 
Bridge, was born in Port Hope, Ontario 
in 1854. Graduating from Rensselaer 
Polytechnic Institute in 1875, Waddell 
worked as a civil engineer and professor 
of engineering, both in the United 
States and in Japan. In 1887, he estab-
tary problems, and overspeculation.
His faith in the bridge unshaken, Garret- 
son attempted still another reorganization 
two months later. This effort, aided by his 
creditors, was named the Combination 
Bridge Company. With a 2 percent tax ap­
proved by Sioux City voters (amounting to 
about $300,000) and a 10 percent assessment 
of the company’s $4 million in stock, the 
bridge building resumed in June 1895. Re­
vised contracts with Sooysmith and the 
Phoenix Bridge Company required four days 
to negotiate because the new company
lished an engineering practice in Kansas 
City, doubling as western agent for the 
Phoenix Bridge Company of Pennsyl­
vania. Many years later he moved to 
New York City, where he died in 1938.
Waddell is considered one of Ameri­
ca’s foremost bridge engineers in the era 
of long-span structures. The Pacific 
Short Line Bridge, with its two swing 
spans, was among his earliest designs. 
He is particularly known for the devel­
opment of the modern vertical-lift 
bridge, his first being the Halstead 
Street Bridge in Chicago (1895). He also 
served as consulting engineer for Chica­
go’s elevated railway (1896), which to­
day defines that city’s central business 
district — the Loop. Waddell’s later 
work includes the Newark Bay Bridge 
(1926), the 3,720-foot cantilever bridge 
at Cairo, Illinois (1929), and the An­
thony Wayne High Level Bridge at To­
ledo, Ohio (1931).
Waddell wrote extensively about the 
mechanics and economics of bridge­
building. Among his publications are 
Designing Ordinary Highway Bridges 
(1884) and Bridge Engineering (1916).
wanted the bridge finished as quickly as 
possible. Indeed, reported Chief Engineer 
Waddell, he had agreed “to do a piece of 
work unprecedented in the history of civil 
engineering” — in just eight months!
Note on Sources
This article is based on a renort by Dennett, Muessig 
and Associates, Ltd. for trie Iowa Department ot 
Transportation. The report and accompanying photo­
graphs and drawings are now included in the Historic 
American Engineering Record collections of the 
Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

The task of building the Combination 
Bridge required both engineering skill and 
physical courage, as workers had to handle 
heavy machinery above and below the wa­
ter line. At left is a dredging bucket used in 
preliminary excavations. Later, steel 
caissons are towed into position on the ri­
ver (above). Working in the caissons was 
probably the most dangerous phase of the 
bridgebuilding. Teams of “sandhogs" — 
enclosed within a pressurized chamber 
eight feet high — removed gravel, sand, 
and mud under the caisson, clearing its 
path to bedrock below. A system of pipes 
carried the muck out of the chamber and 
into the water.
A continuing problern in the underwater work was decompression sickness — commonly 
known as “the bends>y — caused by a too-rapid reduction in air pressure as sandhogs 
ascended from the depths. Treatment with oxygen — and a good hot meal — restored 
vigor to men stricken with the bends. (Markings on original photographs.)
The Palimpsest
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The Palimpsest 21
Once the caisson reached 
bedrock, it was filled with 
concrete, forming the pier's 
foundation. Sandhogs then 
paved the pier (lower left), 
and prepared it for struc­
tural steel.
Two of the bridge's six 
piers required power stations 
for the swing spans, pictured 
under construction (upper 
left). Soon afterward, con­
struction progress ac­
celerated as crews worked 
around the clock on the steel 
superstructure (upper right). 
Illuminated by huge arc 
lights, laborers carried struc­
tural pieces out onto the 
bridge during the night in 
preparation for the next 
day's work.
The Iowa draw span rests 
on steel rollers fitted be­
tween cast iron tracks (lower 
right) turned by a rack and 
pinion system anchored to 
the pier. Driven by two cap­
stans — originally operated 
by four men but later 
powered by electric engines 
— the swing spans could be 
lifted and rotated out of the 
way of oncoming river traf-
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The First Fixed Span, October 5-13, 1895 October 5, 1895
October 7, 1895
October 8, 1895
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Sioux cost millions, but it 
to markets in northeastern 
WW> sought  for years. Renovated
its eighty-five year, history, the bridge
281 ̂ im $ $  Curious Sioux, * 
Sfroil along the bridge s Iowa approach shortiy 
[he grand opening in January 1896. Construction
e n fi ate plied
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William Steele's Silent Music

A Martyr for Prohibition: The Murder of Reverend George C Haddock

Iowa's Handwritten Newspapers

Spanning the Missouri

Editor's Note

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