http://steamboatsonthered.com/ this might be the answer…I have come across a couple of swing rr bridges up there but there has not been a barge on the red river since 1909. Even newer bridges seem to have a ability to manually swing open if needed. I look at the Red River today and it seems hard to get down in a canoe let alone a steamboat.
Lots of places had a bit of commercial navigation before the railroad was built, frequently very seasonal and with fairly small vessels. The typical sternwheeler was designed to operate in very shallow water. The shipping company would insist on having a moveable span so they could continue to operate. Partly they hoped by making it more expensive for the railroad company it might delay or even block it. In most cases the shipping company collapsed within a year of the railroad opening because their business vanished. A century later the legacy is a host of unused swing and lift bridges around the continent.
John
Until the Army Corps says/rules otherwise.
Engineers don’t make the rules. They design around them.
Methinks the key factor here is whether the waterway is considered navigable.
As long as it is, any potential obstruction has to be able to accomodate whatever vessels the waterway can support.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigable_waterway
Assumng there’s no way to go around, you’ve got three choices. Go over, under, or put in a moveable bridge…
It surprised me not too manyl years ago when I discovered that many of our md and far western rivers were deemed commercially navigable over a thousand miles inland from the Pacific Ocean as well as the Gulf of Mexico. Railroads…and highways…have had to maintain bridges which could be opened to river traffic when needed. Many bridges, of course, have been rebuilt to clear the normal mast heights on given rivers and much of the commercial waterway traffic is gone. There are still commercial shipping companies with tariffs should a customer appear. Yes, steamboats were the early boats but barges or tows are the norm today for such things as grain, minerals, and liquid products which are not time sensitive.
Check some of your history books of these areas, including books on the railroads, agriculture, mining and drilling, and boating…Columbia to Snake River; Mississippi and Mossouri river basins…
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Some bridges built as swing/draw and still having the appearance of a movable bridge, may be decommissioned and no longer functioning as originally intended if they receive the OK from the Coast Guard or other authorizing agency.
Near MIA airport until the late 1950s the Miami river was navigatable to beyond NW of the airport. A whole bunch of lift and bascule bridges span that waterway. River was was closed to Ocean traffic just east of LaJune Rd near the airport so a dam could be built to maintain freshwater in the everglades. Most of the draws are still there in Miami Springs except straight bridge on LaJune Rd. Dam only raised freshwater level 4 ft but was one of a series of dams built along La June rd and other locations. Note: calling it a dam is somewhat grandiouse.
Also others, while still officially “moveable” would probably require several months notice (or more) before it could be moved. If the mechanism hasn’t operated for 70 years there is likely to be some corrosion in the gears and rollers, or cables weakened by rust. The winding key for manual operation may have been lost so a new one must be made. Since it is unlikely that a need to open the bridge will ever occur, there is little reason to spend the time, effort and expense in getting formal authorization to fix it in place unless the bridge is going to be rebuilt. Often a nearby low level road bridge would stop any effort to resume navigation anyway.
John
At Fisher’s Landing again they saw a locomotive which Lady Dufferin records in her diary as “No. 2 of the Canada Pacific Railway. It is going to Winnipeg,” she added, “with a train of railway trucks, and it is to be called the `Lady Dufferin’.” This engine now stands in front of Winnipeg’s C.P.R. station, and is designated as “C.P.R. No. 1, Countess of Dufferin”. With the “railway trucks”, it was taken on barges to Winnipeg by the Selkirk and used to lay track between Winnipeg and Whitemouth. Later it took Sir William Van Horne. president of the line, through the West, and pulled the first train to cross the Rockies when it took Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald on his first trans-Canada journey.
http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/transactions/3/steamboating.shtml
Who will carry the rails the Winnipeg?
Having spent most of my life in the movable bridge capital of the United States, I have observed that there are lots of movable road and rail bridges that are raised only occasionally. There are also a fair number of movable bridges that still have the machinery in place but the control mechanisms have been removed, such as those over the South Branch of the Chicago River and Sanitary and Ship Canal west of Ashland Avenue.
On the Calumet River, masted navigation has shrunk over the years so the movable road and rail bridges over that river are not raised as much as in the past.
Seems like there was a story in the past year or two in Trains about a family who, after much ado, got the NYC to “open” a movable bridge that, as I recall, had been straight railed.
Back when Amtrak was trying to get money from Congress to replace movable bridges built by NYNH&H over a century ago, one of the congressmen on the committee wanted to know why all of the money was going to be spent in Connecticut. Then-President David Gunn replied “Because that’s where the bridges are. There’s nothing political about this.”
It might not be a dam, it might be a wier:
CHECK DAM, DIVERSION DAM, AND IN THE STATED CASE BARRIER DAM.
I’ll correct you on several counts Bonas. The swing bridges on the Red River were built to permit the passage of stern and side wheel steamboats with their tall stacks, not barges. Their shallow draft enabled the steamboats to operate on the Red and even other much smaller rivers. It wasn’t until the late 1920’s that steamboat traffic ended on the Red.
15 or so years ago the Corps of Engineers completed a series of locks and dams that opened the Red to barge navigation from Shreveport south to its confluence with the Mississippi River and today there is considerable barge traffic on that part of the river. This also enabled passage of the six riverboat casinos that today are located in Shreveport and its sister city across the Red, Bossier City. This required opening three through truss railroad swing bridges that hadn’t been opened in nearly 70 years; the Cotton Belt and Illinois Central bridges at Shreveport and the Kansas City Southern bridge at Alexandria. The manual opening of these bridges was quite a sight and attracted a large audience of onlookers plus prominent TV and newspaper coverage.
Mark
railroads often tried to kill the canals by making bridge that were not navigable
Mark,
I think you are referring to a different Red River, the original post referred to the Red River of North Dakota and Minnesota. I wasn’t quite sure about which river the thread title was referring to until after reading the first post.
- Erik
When the Soo Line built their main line from Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN to Sault St. Marie, MI they crossed the St. Croix River at Cedar Bend between Minnesota and Wisconsin. In 1887 they were required to have a swing bridge to allow for river boat passage (as rivers were the major transportation routes at the time). There was river boat construction in Osceola which is about 3 miles up stream of the bridge and significant logging operation on the river at that time. The swing bridge is still in place. Read about the bridge here. The bridge swung in the middle and law required it to swing monthly to test its operation. It no longer swings and most of the gearing mechanism is gone.
The Osceola and St Croix Valley Railway crosses that bridge on its scenic ride during the summer months.
Erik,
I believe you are right. I live close to the Red River in Louisiana and failed to think Bonas might be referring to the Red River of the North.
Mark
I am talking red river in ND from Fargo to Winniopeg via grand forks