Interest in internal improvements led the legislatures of Virginia and Ohio in 1816 to authorize the Wheeling and Belmont Bridge Company to connect Wheeling, Virginia, with Belmont County, Ohio, and although the National Road reached Wheeling in 1818, a bridge over the Ohio was not commissioned until 1847. In competition with John Roebling, the contract went to Charles Ellet, Jr., and the resulting bridge had a 1010-foot span measured from the centers of its two supporting towers, making it the longest clear-span bridge in the world at the time. Its materials, including the drawn iron wire for the cables, were produced locally, and the main cables rested on iron rollers atop each tower to relieve strain caused by temperature changes. High winds in 1854 set up an oscillation in the deck structure that severely damaged the bridge, but under Ellet's supervision reconstruction began almost immediately and it reopened in three months. In 1867 tracks were authorized on the bridge for horse-drawn streetcars, and in 1872 Washington Roebling was commissioned to upgrade it with diagonal cable stays. The bridge remained essentially unchanged until a new steel deck system was installed in 1956, and work completed in 1999 repaired the stiffening truss and wire rope stays, fully inspected and rewrapped the cables, and added new illumination. Charles Ellet, Jr., born in 1810 in Bucks County near Philadelphia, left farming behind, joined a survey of the Susquehanna River in 1827, worked on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, studied in France after 1830, and after returning to the U.S. in 1832 became a leading advocate of wire suspension bridge construction; his 1841 Fairmount Bridge across the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia helped place him in the forefront of that field in America, a position strengthened by the Wheeling Suspension Bridge. Just five days before the official opening on November 10, 1849, rising water forced the steamboat Messenger to cut nearly 8 feet from its smokestacks to pass upstream, and a similar problem affected the Hibernia #2 the next day. On behalf of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania challenged the bridge in federal court as an obstruction to river traffic, and in May 1852 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it had to be elevated or removed by February 1, 1853. The Bridge Company then won Congressional support to designate it a post and military road, and legislation passed by the end of August 1852 legalized the bridge and fixed its height and location. After another challenge by Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court in 1856 recognized that Congressional action and ruled in favor of the bridge; by then, however, most steamboats had hinged stacks that could be lowered to pass under bridges. Today it stands as a notable example of pre-Civil War engineering and as one of the world's most significant historic bridges.

Photo: Habs

Photo: Allen C. Browne

Photo: Allen C. Browne

Photo: Allen C. Browne

Photo: Allen C. Browne

Photo: Allen C. Browne

Photo: J. J. Prats

Photo: J. J. Prats

Photo: J. J. Prats

Photo: J. J. Prats

Photo: J. J. Prats

Wheeling, West Virginia · USA