The Railroad, part 3

In 1854, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis informed Henry Farnam that since Rock Island had once been used as a military reservation he could not use it in the construction of a railroad bridge across the Mississippi River. With this official decree to back them those with steamboat interest secured a federal injunction. This injunction charged the builders of the prospective bridge with illegal trespassing, destruction of government property, and obstruction of steamboat navigation. The case was to be brought before the court in July of 1855.

When the case did come up in court the judge’s decision sort of took the wind out of the sails of the steamboat folks. The judge ruled for the Railroad Bridge Company, declaring that the bridge was not an obstruction to navigation. He even went so far as to declare that “railroads had become highways in something the same sense as rivers; neither could be suffered to become a permanent obstruction to the other, but each must yield something to the other according to the demands of the public convenience and necessities of commerce.”

Nine months after this wordy declaration Farnam’s 1,535-foot-long bridge was completed. On April 22, 1856 Farnam was one of the honored passengers to ride the first train, approaching it from the East, to cross the Mississippi River. In both Davenport and Rock Island church bells rang and along both banks of the river crowds gathered and cheered the train on. But just like the judge had decreed back in court in July of the previous year something had to yield. In this case it was the bridge.

On May 6, to the shrill screams of steamboat whistles and the clanging of alarm bells, folks of both Rock Island and Davenport rushed from their houses to find out what all the commotion was about—and why black thick smoke was boiling skyward from the new bridge.

It seems that just after dawn, the packet boat Effie Afton, just out from New Orleans, had “accidentally” collided broadside with the bridge. The crash knocked down the packet’s chimneys and overturned her stoves. The vessel was engulfed in flames. Of course the blaze quickly spread to a wooden section of the bridge, and while the crowds watched from both ends of the bridge, one blazing span fell into the river. Then the swift current swept away both the burning boat and the ruined section of the bridge. Of course the steamboat interest declared the whole incident an accident, but oddly enough it didn’t take many minutes following the event for the steamboat Hamburg to raise a very large banner that read: Mississippi Bridge Destroyed, Let All Rejoice.