If you watch a sporting event on national television that’s being held in Minneapolis, the cameras will eventually get around to showing the Stone Arch Bridge.
When it was built, the bridge was a symbol of the city, used in advertising and on letterheads. Over the years it was replaced by other landmarks: Minnehaha Falls, City Hall, the Foshay Tower, the IDS Center, Spoonbridge and Cherry.
But now it’s back. It has again become an endearing symbol of the city, its industrial heritage and might, its elegance and its history.
It is the second oldest bridge still standing that spans the Mississippi River. Only the Eads Bridge in St. Louis is older. It remains the only stone arch bridge to span America’s great river.
Its curving shape and its graceful white arches have become a mecca for walkers and bikers. It provides stunning views of the river, the milling district and the rest of the city.
An 1891 lithograph depicting the Stone Arch Bridge, St. Anthony Falls and the Mills District. (A.M. Smith, Provided)
The Falls
But before there was a Stone Arch Bridge, there was St. Anthony Falls.
In the mid-19th century, tourists would travel on boats up the Mississippi just to see the Falls — the only major falls on the entire length of the river. Native peoples had considered the falls holy ground for centuries.
But when the entrepreneurs out east looked to St. Anthony Falls, it wasn’t just for the aesthetic beauty or spiritual importance, it was for what it represented — water power.
Lumber mills, flour mills and hydroelectric power grew out of the Falls, and a major city was born. The area around the Falls was honeycombed with channels, canals, tailraces and other means of harvesting the immense power of St. Anthony Falls.
In 1869, an ambitious plan was hatched: the construction of the Eastman tunnel, which would allow development of Nicollet Island. The construction, though, breached the limestone cap; the resulting flood threatened the entire milling industry. In 1876, the Army Corps of Engineers built a concrete dike, and a protective wooden apron was built in 1880 to further shield the fragile limestone. Minneapolis continued its climb into becoming the flour milling center of the United States, if not the world.
The Empire Builder
James J. Hill, a Canadian who emigrated to the United States, settled in St. Paul in 1856 when he was 18 years old. By 1883, his St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway (later the Great Northern), which he had purchased as a bankrupt business in 1879, was worth $25 million.
Hill needed another railroad bridge in Minneapolis to carry his trains, goods and passengers from the east bank (formerly St. Anthony) to the west bank (the original Minneapolis) and vice-versa. It would connect with a new Union Station to be built (in 1885) on the west side of the river near Hennepin Avenue. The bridge would bring wheat from the Red River Valley and Canada to the Minneapolis Mills on both sides of the river.
Col. Charles C. Smith was chosen as the chief engineer for the project; work began in 1882. It took 22 months to complete.
The project was originally labeled “Hill’s Folly” by locals because of its perceived grandeur, construction problems and expense. But upon its completion in 1883, it quickly became one of the major railroad bridges in the United States, carrying as many as 82 passenger trains a day over its side-by-side tracks.
The original idea was for an iron bridge crossing the river at Nicollet Island. But Smith studied the plan and found that such a bridge could further harm the river’s eroding sandstone, threatening the stability of the water power system.
The design and the stone arches, below the falls, were intended to provide a strong bridge that would not harm the existing falls and would be, as Hill described it, even stronger than the surrounding topography. The bridge crosses the Mississippi on a diagonal and then gently curves to follow the river, avoiding pre-existing structures on both sides of the river.
The river at that time was pretty much split in two at Nicollet Island, and it continued that split past Hennepin Island. The east side of the river is now much quieter. The bridge passed over or touched several islands that are much diminished or have disappeared altogether, such as Cataract and Upton islands.
There are 23 arches in the bridge, some as short as 40 feet, and others as wide as 100 feet. The bridge cost Hill and his investors $650,000, or about $22 million in today’s money. Today, the cost of using hand-cut stone would be nearly cost-prohibitive.
Why the arches? It was reported at the time that Hill wanted a bridge that would emulate the arched viaducts that Rome built across Europe to bring water to the emerging large cities.
All the stone for the project came from local sources. The granite came from Sauk Rapids and the magnesium limestone for the facing came from Mankato and Stone City, Iowa. Marble for the trim came from Bridgeport, Wisconsin. Fill came from the local riverbanks. In sum, the project used over 100,000 tons of stone.
The rock under the bridge was not reliable; as piers were sunk into it, the project seemed on verge of ruin many times.
Hill, known as “the Empire Builder,” spent lavishly on the project, seeing it as an architectural wonder that would live on beyond his lifetime. In a 1905 speech, he said: “The hardest thing I ever had to do in my life, or the hardest undertaking, was the building of the Stone Arch Bridge.”
All the stone placement was done by hand using pulleys, horsepower, ropes, blocks and tackle. Some of the army of stone cutters assembled were as young as 10 years old. Three men died during construction.
When completed, the bridge spanned 2,100 feet, was 82 feet high and 28 feet wide. Heavy stone walls were on each side of the bridge. Trains would often take on the curved bridge at full speed, and Smith wanted to make sure if the train left the tracks it wouldn’t leave the bridge.
Later, a plaque was put under one of the arches acknowledging Hill for his leadership in the project. It is the only plaque bearing his name he ever allowed on one of his thousands of railroad projects, depots and bridges.
Still serving a purpose
Larry Millett, the architectural writer who has written several books on the Twin Cities, called the Stone Arch Bridge “the most poetic of all Twin Cities bridges and a spectacular feat of Victorian engineering” and said it has “become a symbol of the reinvigorated riverfront.”
Millett said, “Today, a walk across the bridge, which received dramatic new lighting in 2005, is one of the great experiences of the city offering an unmatched vista of St. Anthony Falls and the milling district, as well as the tactile pleasure of feeling beneath your feet a structure truly built for the ages.”
Hill biographer Albro Martin said the Empire Builder was interested in a bridge that will continue flourishing “when we are all dead and gone.” He wrote that other creations have come to represent Minneapolis: “But in the years when Minneapolis would shoulder its way to the front rank among American cities, its symbol was Jim Hill’s great Stone Arch Bridge.”
In 1883, the bridge opened and train passengers got their first look at Minneapolis and the Falls. The Pioneer Press wrote: “The value of such an approach to Minneapolis as an advertisement can hardly be estimated.”
The Daily Minnesota Tribune, also in 1883, looked into the future. “It is constructed to stand the test of time when the golden age shall arrive when the problem of aerial navigation shall have been solved and railroads and railroad bridges will be useless works of engineering.”
