| Show x 4 Z e 4 1 le colonial covered bridge in virginia prepared by nat onal CE E geography Geo g graph h c soc ety D C N EW works of man more profoundly F FEW affect his destiny than does the bridge an empire was at stake when xerxes threw his pontoons across the and rome s long arm stretched over europe when caesar s army bridged the rhine lack of pontoons on which to cross the seme seine napoleon corn com alamed kept him from ending a war our own gen zachary taylor reminded the war department that its failure to send bridge materials had prevented him from destroy ing the mexican army yet history being so largely the annals of wars fails to emphasize the importance of bridges in everyday life when you reflect how bridges now make travel easy and swift between towns cities states state S even between nations where rive rivers rs form frontiers you feel that few other devices conceived by in a n serve more to promote understand ing and mutual progress ride the air across america and see how bridges dot the map if the day be clear half a dozen may be in sight at once from culverts over backwoods creeks to steel giants that span broad rivers you see a bridge of some kind wherever rails or highways cross a water course how many bridges of all kinds america has nobody knows no official count exists united states army engineers concerned only with bridges that span navi gable rivers of the united state have more than 6 on their list look down on any river city such as pittsburgh see the steady two way traffic that flows oer its bridges like lines of ants march ing think of the jams the chaos in traffic should all bridges suddenly fail I 1 trace the bridge through history and you see how its development is an index to man s social and me ch anical advance the urge Is to get across fallen trees chance stepping stones or swinging vines fo formed amed his first bridges he used them in flight from enemies to hunt fight or steal a wife on his own predatory quest fantastic old woodcut woodcuts s even show us living chains of monkeys swinging from tree to tree across jungle to get across even as when the waters parted and Is rael s children walked dry shod over the red sea floor was the primary urge to this day as in parts of tibet africa and peru men still cross dizzy canyons on bridges of twisted grass and wild vines yet the bunc tion of these primitive structures is 13 the same as that of the new golden gate bridge or the new giant at sydney australia they carry man across we do not know who built the first bridge at the end of the reign of queen semiramis about B C an arched bridge spanned the euphrates at babylon the legend ary hanging gardens some say consisted of trees and plants set along the roadway of this wide bridge explorers at zar s palace at babylon found no traces of any bridge yet the use of the arch is very old thereabouts you see proof of this in the amazing ruins rums of palace east of babylon where the vaulted ceiling of the grand banquet hall still standing is 85 feet high romans left us fine examples of the ancient arch bridge to this day their masonry work is unsurpassed for strength and beauty some of their early stone bridges are still in use only in recent times came cast iron steel and cables in our own country it was the advent first of railways and then of improved highways for motor cars and trucks which was to strew bridges from coast to coast in the pioneers bold trek to our middle west and beyond they ford ed streams or used crude ferryboats drawn by cables often the forty biners swam their horses and oxen and floated their heavy wagons by lashing logs on either side of the wagon boxes covered wagons bound for the indian territory camped at fords to rest wash clothes swap horses and shoe them and to soak their tires today steel bridges span many such creeks across them whiz motorcars motor cars so fast that passengers barely catch even a glimpse of the streams that once seemed so wide built for railroads tram train riders asleep or busy with books and cards are rushed for 20 miles over the famous salt lake cut off of the pioneer union pacific railway the world s longest bridge structure it is called stand this on end and it would reach so high that men on the ground could not even see the top of it I 1 most new bridges we now build are for highways but when you recall that after 1850 we laid more than miles of rails you can se how the railroad first with its crude wooden trestles scattered bridges across america As westward migration rose to millions the use of fords and ferries dwindled and bridges multiplied sometimes not without local disputes when the first railroad bridge was started over the mississippi at davenport iowa steamboat men enjoined its building as a nuisance to navigation abraham lincoln lawyer argued the case for the railway and the bridge was built he is crazy I 1 men said of james B eads when he sought to build the largest steel arch bridge of its time over the mississippi at st louis doubters sniffed at eads use of pneumatic caissons for bridge pier foundas foundations 1 ons I 1 told you so they said W when hen the first two half arches approached their junction at mid span and failed by a few inches to fit pack the arch in ice to ordered eads the metal shrank and the ends dropped into place the same taunts of ignorance were flung at john A roebling and his brooklyn bridge men cannot work like spiders these critics said they cannot spin giant cables from fine wires high in air f R aeb ling died before the task was done but his monument is the bridge that spans east river in the halt half century since its completion amazing ad vance has been made in the design materials foundations and erection methods of bridge engineering and there is speed 1 it took more than ten years to build the brooklyn bridge greater structures are built now in one third the ime when opened in 1883 roebling s brooklyn bridge was called one of the won ders ot of the world now the george washington bridge over the hudson at new york has a span of 3 feet more than twice that of the brooklyn bridge and the new gold en gate bridge spans 4 feeal lore of ancient bridges our american bridges were all built yesterday as the old world counts time except that american indians laid flimsy bridges of poles over narrow streams and sometimes sent a crowd of squaws to test a new bridge to see if it would sustain the tribe s horses we have little of the lore the traditions and super sti eions which cling to ancient bridges of europe and the east it is even hard for us to imagine t at the caravan bridge in smyrna may be 3 years old that homer wrote verse in nearby caves or that st paul passed over this bridge on his way to preach or that xerxes the persian king bridged the greek straits more than years before christ then tasting grief even as eads and roebling he saw a storm destroy it so that he had to order the rough waters to be lashed and cursed by his official cursors while he executed his first bridge crew and set another gang at the task reading the papers it was easy for us to learn all about the inter national bridge over the rio grande between el paso and juarez when president taft walked out on it to shake hands with president diaz of mexico later by radio we heard the prince of wales now duke of windsor and the diplomats speak when the niagara peace bridge opened to let and canadians mingle in friendly commerce myths and folklore myths and superstitions linger about many bridges since people often die in floods the romans looked on a bridge as an infringement on the rights of the river gods to take their toll hence human be ings first then effigies effi gies were thrown into the flooded tiber by priests while vestals sang to appease the river gods in parts of china today a live pig or other animal is so sacrificed when rising floods threat en a bridge turkish folklore re eals this same idea in his book dar ul islam to air ir mark sykes records this legend of a bridge under construction which had fallen three times this bridge needs a life said the workmen and the master saw a beautiful girl accompanied by a bitch and her puppies and he said we will give the first life that comes by but the dog and her little ones hung back so the girl was built alive into the bridge and only her hand with a gold bracelet upon it was left out side it was peter of Cole church a monk in charge of the brothers of the bridge who built the old lon don bridge it was a queer ture lure with rows of high wooden houses flanking each side overhang ing the thames soon after its corn com the houses at one end caught fire crowds rushed out on the bridge and hosts of people died eith er in the blaze or from jumping into the stream |
