Missouri Landmarks

The Eads Bridge

The Eads Bridge is a combined road and railway bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Missouri, connecting St. Louis with East St. Louis, Illinois.

The bridge is named for its designer and builder, James Buchanan Eads.  Eads was a world-renowned  American civil engineer and inventor, holding more than fifty patents.

Eads was named for his mother’s cousin, then Congressman and subsequent President of the United States James Buchanan.  His early life was spent growing up in St. Louis, Missouri.  He was largely self-educated; at thirteen he left school to work to help support his family.  In Eads’s spare time, he read books on physical science, mechanics, machinery, and civil engineering.

James Buchanan Eads

Eads made his initial fortune in salvage, by creating a diving bell for retrieving goods from the bottom of rivers, goods that were sunk there by riverboat disasters, especially along the busy Mississippi River.  He also devised special boats for raising the remains of sunken ships from the river bed.  Because he was in charge of these boats, people began to call him Captain Eads.

In 1861, after the outbreak of the Civil War, Eads was called to Washington at the prompting of his friend, Attorney General Edward Bates, to consult on the defense of the Mississippi River.   Soon afterward, he was contracted to construct ironclads for the United States Navy.  He produced seven such ships within five months:  the St. Louis, the Cairo, the Carondelet, the Cincinnati, the Louisville, the Mound City, and the Pittsburgh.  He continued to produce ironclad steamships throughout the war, which greatly aided the Union.

When completed in 1874, the Eads Bridge was the longest arch bridge in the world, with an overall length of 6,442 feet (1,964 m).  The ribbed steel arch spans were considered daring, as was the use of steel as a primary structural material.  (It was the first use of true steel in a major bridge project, the first bridge of a significant size with steel as its primary material.)

The Eads Bridge was constructed from 1867 through 1874. It was the first road and rail bridge to cross the Mississippi River at St. Louis.

The Eads Bridge

The Eads Bridge was also the first bridge to be built using cantilever support methods, which allowed steam boat traffic to continue using the river during construction, and one of the first to make use of pneumatic caissons in the construction of bridge piers.  The Eads Bridge caissons, still among the deepest ever sunk, were responsible for one of the first major outbreaks of “caisson disease” (also known as “the bends” or decompression sickness). Fifteen workers died, two other workers were permanently disabled, and seventy-seven were severely afflicted.

On June 14, 1874, John Robinson led a “test elephant” on a stroll across the new Eads Bridge to prove it was safe.   (It was believed that elephants had instincts that would keep them from setting foot on unsafe structures.)  A big crowd cheered as the elephant from a traveling circus lumbered towards Illinois.  Two weeks later, Eads sent fourteen locomotives back and forth across the bridge at one time.

The Eads Bridge became an iconic image of the city of St. Louis from the time of the bridge’s construction until 1965, when the Gateway Arch was constructed.

The bridge is still in use. It crosses the St. Louis riverfront between Laclede’s Landing, to the north, and the grounds of the Gateway Arch, to the south. The restored road deck allows vehicles and pedestrians to cross the river. (The St. Louis MetroLink light rail line has used the rail deck since 1993.)