By 1911, load limits and costly repairs on the Walnut Street Bridge led Chattanooga officials to plan a new river crossing, and many favored a bridge at Market Street because much traffic was bound for downtown’s commercial center, though they also wanted concrete construction for easier maintenance. A Market Street location posed major problems because it would destroy part of the wharf and, due to the land level and the possibility that gunboats might need to travel the river, required 300-foot channel spans with 100-foot clearance, standards a concrete bridge could not meet there without a drawbridge. City chief engineer B. H. Davis devised a design acceptable to both the City Commissioners and the Army Corps of Engineers: a concrete bridge with the required 300-foot channel span, shorter spans from the banks to central piers, and a steel bascule drawbridge in the center, whose wings were counterbalanced by concrete blocks that moved toward the roadbed as the span lifted. Construction began in late November 1914 and was financed by $500,000 in 5%, 30-year bonds, but difficult conditions drove costs far higher. Pier construction brought some of the worst problems: an underground stream flooded one cofferdam until the spring was plugged with concrete, while another site sat on large boulders instead of solid bottom, forcing underwater excavation by caisson workers known as sand hogs to reach bedrock beneath a 55-foot concrete pier weighing more than a million pounds. Wooden falseworks erected for the concrete arches and roadbed required constant attention because they trapped driftwood, and during a 28-foot flood on December 19, 1916, debris accumulated so rapidly that river pressure dislodged the falseworks and a span had to be abandoned before its concrete had cured. Cost overruns and difficulties continued into 1917, and after another major flood crested on March 7 at the fourth highest water level recorded in Chattanooga, the bridge remained largely undamaged. The drawbridge was successfully tested on August 3, and on November 17, 1917, the bridge officially opened and was presented to the county. It was named in honor of Chief John Ross, leader of the Cherokee Nation on the Trail of Tears. Though it cost twice what the county had hoped, it remained the largest bridge of its type in the U.S. and the third largest in the world. After its construction, traffic on the Tennessee included steam packets such as the Joe Wheeler, whose parts helped build the towboat Captain Lyerly in 1920, and commercial river craft increasingly shifted to towboats and then diesel-powered vessels; during World War II, a U.S. gunboat was also wharfed at Chattanooga.

Photo: Joerg Hagedorn

Photo: Joel Seewald