Efforts to build a bridge connecting Camden with Philadelphia began in 1818, but a completed bridge did not arrive until 1926. Ferries had carried transportation across the Delaware River as early as the 1680's and helped drive Camden's growth and development, yet in the early twentieth century the growing number of ferries and the rise of automobile use created demand for a better crossing. Pennsylvania and New Jersey first established separate commissions to study a new bridge, then joined in 1919 to create the Delaware River Bridge Commission. Bridge engineer Ralph Modjeski served as chief engineer and architect Paul Philippe Cret as architect. Their work produced the world's longest suspension bridge, with a main span of 1,750 feet. Construction began on January 6, 1922. Caissons were sunk to the river bottom for the main tower foundations, and men working inside the caisson chambers removed material by hand until bedrock was reached. The main towers were begun in 1923 and finished in 1924. The main cables were then made through cable-spinning, with 25,000 miles of steel wire pulled in a continuous loop from end to end, tightly bound, grouped into strands, and compacted into the finished cables. The cables were completed in 1925, and the bridge opened on July 1, 1926, three days ahead of its scheduled opening on the nation's sesquicentennial. It opened as the Delaware River Bridge and was renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in 1956. At the official opening ceremony on July 1, 1925, more than 25,000 people attended with Pennsylvania Governor Gifford Pinchot and New Jersey Governor A. Harry Moore presiding, and afterward an estimated 100,000 people walked across before vehicular traffic began. On July 5, 1926, President Calvin Coolidge arrived to dedicate the bridge.
