James Eads

Eads' engineering masterpiece, the Eads Bridge connecting St. Louis to Illinois

James Buchanan Eads (1820-1887) was a self-taught civil engineer who first made a fortune salvaging material from wreckage at the bottom of the Mississippi River, and then built for $10 million the Eads Bridge that was the largest of its time after the Civil War.

Eads was an innovative, but demanding, engineer who had the audacity to return a massive amount of steel to Andrew Carnegie's company because its quality was not high enough for Eads. His bridge was such a marvel of engineer that it continues to carry trains, cars, and pedestrians across the river to this day.

This bridge accomplished many "firsts":

• first steel-truss bridge
• first bridge to carry railroad tracks
• first major bridge over the Mississippi River
• first to rely entirely on cantilever construction for its superstructure
• first to use tubular cord members
• first in the U.S. to use pneumatic caissons in constructing piers, sunk to a record-breaking depth of 123 feet

Construction began in 1867 and it was dedicated on July 4, 1874. His project was not commercially successful at the time.