Molded pedestals, parapets,
and hand-railings decorated the
bridge with Victorian ornaments.
It now lay at the bottom of the
Illinois River.
Government engineers
reported on the accident and
speculated why the bridge fell
into the river. They deduced
that the catastrophe was a
culmination of a long series of
mishaps and blunders.
They concluded that as early as
1908,
engineers noticed that piers
three and four where not placed
on sound bedrock and had settled
into the river floor by 10 inches
in a couple months. Excavations
to remedy the settling caused
cracks to appear in the walls
of the spans. As the city was
side-excavating to support the
cracking walls, the Illinois River
began flooding and stopped the
work.
With the foundations deeply
undermined, the force of the river
current was too much for the
lateral support system, a recipe
for disaster.
The contractors who built the
bridge, Marsh Bridge Company,
immediately declared bankruptcy
and left the city of Peoria
hanging. It took three years to
clean up the mess before the
new contractors, The Milwaukee
Bridge Company, could start a
new bridge in January of 1912.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 8
The Past
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