History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I, Part 11

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co.
Number of Pages: 814

USA > Ohio > History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I > Part 11

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THE NEW BRIDGE.

This is in course of construction across the Ohio, from the foot of Twenty-third street, Louis- ville, over Sand Island to the foot of Vincennes street, New Albany, a distance of 2,551 feet. It is the outgrowth of the project of the Louis- ville, Evansville & St. Louis railroad, presently to be consummated, and which saw no way into Louisville except by a lengthy steam-ferry

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

reached by precipitous banks or by the track from New Albany to Jeffersonville, controlled by the Pennsylvania company, and thence by the present bridge. This compels the traverse of a distance of six miles, which the new bridge re- duces one-half.

April 1, 1880, the Kentucky Legislature grant- ed a very liberal charter to the Kentucky & In- diana Bridge company for the crection of this bridge. A similar act of incorporation was se- cured in Indiana. October 19, 1881, an ordin- ance of the Louisville General Council was ap- proved, granting the company the right of way in the city, for the location and building of piers, approaches to and abutments of its bridge. The company had meanwhile (in February, 1881) been organized, with Colonel Bennett H. Young, of Louisville, as president. The stock-books of the company were opened in Louisville, and within two days twice as many subscriptions were offered as could be received. Ample surveys and soundings were made, and plans and specifi- cations prepared. Mr. John MacLeod was em- ployed as chief engineer, and Mr. C. Shaler Smith, consulting engineer. Their estimate for the entire cost of the work was $1,385,000, but contracts were let the same year to the amount of $1,400,000. The foundation work was con- tracted at $59,000, the iron and steel for the main bridge at $577,000. The corner-stone of the new bridge was laid in New Albany, October 29, 1881, with imposing ceremonies, of which a sufficient account is comprised in the history of that place. The city had endorsed $250,000 of the $1,000,000 thirty-year five per cent. bonds issued by the company, the city stipulating that work should begin before October 11, 1881. It was commenced in the first week of that month; two of the seven river foundations were soon secured, and work upon the third was to begin by November roth. It is understood at this writing (March, 1882,) that the bridge will go on rapidly to completion.

The report of the ceremonies at the laying of the corner-stone embodies a description of the bridge to-be, from which we quote the follow- ing:

The Kentucky and Indiana bridge will be 2,400 feet in length, but 4,800 feet fram grade to grade, 43 feet wide on roadway deck, the only bridge on the Ohio entirely of wrought iron and steel of the finest quality, and the only structure which impedes navigation so little; also have its

piers located so as to please the coal men (who, if rumors be true, are not the most easily satisfied persons in the world),

The two channel spans are 483 and 480 feet in length and require 5,400,000 pounds of metal, each demanding propor- tionally two and a half times as much steel and iron as the 400-foot span of the upper bridge ; that while adding 83 feet to the length of the span the width is also doubled ; that in addition to the weight of the material required in the con- struction of the highway and footway the present increased weight of railway rolling stock has been provided for.

The great development both in trade and population of the cities to be connected forbids the construction now of a bridge that will not accommodate all classes of travel. This struc- ture now to rise will carry safely the single footman who may wish to pass from shore to shore, while by his side at the same level will move, if required, two 40-ton engines, drawing thirty cars laden with stone; and still alongside a double procession of wagons, loaded to their fullest capacity, can pass; and yet with this enormous burden, the strain on any part will have reached only one-fifth its ultimate strength.

The piers on either side will consist of two iron cylinders sunk to a solid foundation and filled with concrete and capped with stone, while the seven river piers will be built of Bedford oolitic Ilmestone, rising one hundred and eleven feet in height. The Indiana approach will be fifteen hundred feet long, with a nine hundred and ten foot highway approach. The piers will contain 19,492 cubic yards of masonry and the two approaches 3.330 more; the main bridge will require 4,- 092,000 pounds of iron and 3, 180, 000 pounds of steel, with 1,051,000 feet of lumber, board measurement; while the ap- proaches will consume 2,551,000 pounds of iron, and 819,000 feet of lumber. The railway and wagon-way are entirely sep- arate, never crossing each other, and the horses will never see the trains. The piers will be carried down to bed rock, and for the first time on the Ohio river the channel spans will be built without the use of false work to impede navigation. The masonry for eighteen feet above low water mark is laid in Portland cement, and will to that height have a granite facing. The entire wood in the bridge will be of treated lumber, having had the preservative forced in under a pres- sure of one hundred pounds to the square inch, while the roadways will be made of creosoted gum blocks laid in asphalt and gravel. All other highways on Ohio river bridges are simply plank. The structure will also have a double draw, giving one hundred and eighty-five feet channel room on either side of the pier and be operated by steam, improve- ments found in no other bridge on the river.

There has for many years existed the belief that over Sand Island is the best place on the river for a bridge, and the one which nature had specially designed for that purpose. Here there are only nine piers; above there are twenty-six.

There is however one peculiarity at this site. The rise and fall of the water here exhibit the greatest difference at any point on the river. The vast volume of water that pours over the Falls with such terrific force can not escape through the narrow banks from here to the bend below New Albany -- it backs up and crowds over the banks; and according to the test-the great rise of 1832-shows here a difference of sixty-seven and a half feet between high and low water mark, thus requiring this bridge to be laid on one hundred and eleven foot piers, ten feet higher than the upper bridge piers, and making the bottom chord one hundred and ten feet above low and forty-five feet above high water, which is now re- quired by the act of Congress providing for the construction of bridges over this portion of the stream.

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

CHAPTER VI. ROADS, RAILROADS, AND STEAMERS.

Early Locomotive in Louisville-The Lexington & Ohio Railroad-The Louisville, Cincinnati & Lexington (Short Line)-A Reminiscence of 1838-39-The Jeffersonville, Madison & Indianapolis-The Louisville & Nashville-The Louisville, New Albany & Chicago-The Elizabethtown & Paducah-The Ohio & Mississippi-The Louisville, Evansville & St. Louis-The Chesapeake & Ohio-The Fort Wayne, Cincinnati & Louisville-The Louisville, Harrod's Creek & Westport Narrow Guage-Railway Notes-Turnpike Roads-The Louisville & Cincinnati United States Mail Line of Steamers.

AN EARLY LOCOMOTIVE.

It is a fact not generally known, we suspect, even to residents of the Falls cities, that some of the very first attempts at the building of loco- motive engines and of railways were made in this region, on the Kentucky side. Not a mile had yet been traversed on an iron way in Amer- ica, with steam as a motor, before Thomas H. Barlow, a Lexington man, in the late '20's built a small locomotive in that place, of which he made a public show upon a circular track in a hall there, and in 1827 brought it to Louisville and exhibited its working upon a similar track in the old Woodland Garden. A little passenger car, with two seats, was drawn by it, and many old citizens of the town had a ride in what was prob- ably the first vehicle drawn by steam in the New World. The model of Barlow's locomotive may be seen to this day in the museum of the Asylum at Lexington ; and one of his remarkable "plane- tariums" is in the collection of the Polytechnic society, in Louisville.

It was about two years after the exhibition by Barlow in Louisville before the first locomotive in this country, an English one, drew a train up- on the first steam railroad, that of the Delaware & Hudson Canal company, on the track from their mines to Honesdale, Pennsylvania.

THE LEXINGTON AND OHIO RAILROAD.

This was the pioneer railway in Kentucky, and the first to enter Louisville. Its company was chartered in 1830, at the instance of a number of the leading men of Lexington, with a capital of $r,000,000, and authority to build a road from Lexington to some place on the Ohio river. Louisville was the terminal point, however, in view from the beginning, and prominent citizens of this place were early and eagerly interested in the project.

It has been asserted that this was the second steam railway started in the United States, which is not quite true ; but another assertion, made by Colonel Durrett in one of his historical articles of 1880, is undoubtedly correct, that when the charter for it was granted, but twenty-three iniles of such railroad were operated in all the land, and when work was begun the next year, only ninety-five miles had been completed on this continent. The first spike of the Lexington & Ohio road was driven October 21, 1831, at the intersection of Water and Mill streets, in Lexing. ton, by Governor Thomas Metcalf, then Chief Executive of the State. Dr. Charles Caldwell, of the Medical Department of Transylvania Uni- versity, delivered the address of the occasion. The city of Louisville, four years after, con- tributed $200,000 to the road. Colonel Durrett's lucid words, in the newspaper article above re- ferred to, will tell the rest of the story:

The work of construction progressed slowly, and trains did not get through to Frankfort, a distance of twenty-nine miles, until about the close of the year 1835. The first ma- terials for construction, and the first freight and passengers were drawn over the road by horse; but when part of the road had been formally opened to the public, in 1834, and the locomotive went thundering over it, a grand ball cele- bratcd the event, at Brennan's tavern, in Lexington. The track was originally laid with flat rails spiked down to stone sills, and much trouble and danger was caused by one end of the thin iron bars rising up when the locomotive wheels pressed upon the other. All these difficulties have since been overcome by sleepers, cross-ties, and T rails of the most approved style, rendering the road one of the best.

Things neither started nor progressed so well at the Louis- ville end of the road. Disputes rose early and continued late, between the directors and city authorities and citizens, as to the location of the road at this end. The railroad directory wanted the Louisville end to terminate at Portland, and then sprang up the dispute as to the location of the road through the city so as to get to Portland. Elisha C. Winter, of Lex- ington, was president of the road, and John C. Bucklin, mayor of Louisville, and they could come to no agreement as to the location through the city. Neither could the Lex- ington directory, who were Richard Higgins, John Brand, Elisha Warfield, Luther Stephens, Joseph Bruen, Benjamin Gratz, and George Boswell, come to any understanding with George Keats and Benjamin Cawthon, who were the Lonis- ville directors. The city council, consisting of G. W. Meri- weather, B. G. Weir, James Guthrie, James Rudd, J. P. Declary, Jacob Miller, Robert Buckner, F. A. Kaye, J. M. Talbott, and W. Alsop, could not agree concerning any pro- posed route, and as for the citizens who lived along any of the suggested lines, they would agree to nothing. Finally an appeal was made to the Legislature for settling the difficulty, and an extraordinary law passed in 1833, empowering Wil- liam O. Butler,, of Gallatin county; John L. Hickman, of Bourbon; George C. Thompson, of Mercer, and James Crutcher, of Hardin, to determine the streets through which the road was to pass through the city.

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

While, therefore, our neighbors of Lexington at once be- gan war upon their end of the road, with the Chief Execu- tive of the State dri ing the first spike, and an eminent pro- fessor delivering an inaugural oration, we at the Louisville end set out with quarreling, and continued for two years, about where the work was to begin. It was finally deter- mined, however, that the road should enter the city at the in- tersection of Jefferson and Wenzel streets; thence proceed along Jefferson to Sixth, down Sixth to Main, along Main to Twelfth, down Twelfth to Portland avenue, and then along the avenue to Portland. In 1838, three years after the Lex- ington end was working from that city to Frankfort, this end was completed from Portland to Sixth street, and Louisville could then boastof a league of railroad, with a locomotive dash- ng over it, very much to the annoyance instead of the joy of ner citizens, especially those who resided or carried on busi- ness along its line. The first through train on this our first railroad went all the way from Portland to the northwest cor- ner of Main and Sixth streets (where the store of J. M. Rob- inson & Co. now stands) on the 29th of February, 1838. The citizens, however, did not rejoice and celebrate the event with a grand ball, as was done by our neighbors of Lexington at the other end when the first train went through from that city to Frankfort. On the contrary, they were silent and talked of pulling up the rails and throwing the locomotive and the cars into the river. They concluded, however, to go to law about it, after enduring it for about six months. A number of citizens owning property and doing business on Main between Sixth and Thirteenth streets, with Elisha Applegate at their head, filed a bill in Chancery on the 9th of October, 1838, for an injunction against the further use of the locomo- tive in that region. It was declared to be a nuisance, endan- gering life, depreciating property, and injuring business. Levi Tyler, then president of the road, answered on the 19th, and set forth the merits of the road with commendable skill. The company had then spent about $800,000 in making the road from Frankfort to Lexington and from Portland to Sixth street, Louisville, and had some of the $150,000 furnished it by the State, but not enough to make the road from Frank- fort to Louisville.

They were, however, doing a pretty fair business at the Louisville end. From the opening of this end of the road for through trains from Portland to Sixth street, on the 29th of April, to the 6th of November, when the injunction was granted, they had carried 93,240 passengers, at twelve and one-half cents each, from Portland to Sixth street, and re- ceived for it, in cash, $11,656.17. This was at the rate of about $425.25 per week, and their expenses were $202.30 wer week, leaving a neat profit of $229.42 per week. Of course, it was hard that such a business should be stopped by an injunction, even if it did endanger life and depreciate property and injure business, as claimed by the citizens who brought the suit. Judge Bibb, then chancellor, granted and sustained the injunction, but the company took the case to the court of appeals and it was reversed, with instructions to so shape proceedings in the court below as to let that loco- motive continue to convey passengers from Sixth street to Portland, and from Portland to Sixth street.

The road, however, in the midst of a hostile people could never succeed. The citizens who had attempted to enjoin it, were prominent,'and had influence enough to make it too un- popular for success. It never extended its line to the Louis- ville wharf as authorized by the City Council and intended, the gap between Sixth street and the present depot on Jefferson never was filled up, and our first railroad from Portland to Sixth street, instead of being extended through the city and

protracted in length one way or the other, was transferred to a corporation entitled the Louisville & Portland Railroad company, in 1844, for the benefit of the Kentucky Institution for the Education of the Blind. This transfer was made by the State of Kentucky, which had become the owner of the whole line by foreclosing a lien for $150,000 furnished to the company in 1833. The Louisville and Portland Company afterward transferred the road to Isham Henderson, who converted it into a street railroad operated by horse power, in which capacity it still exists.

It may added that, of the thousand miles or more of street railway now in the United States, the first three miles were operated in Louisville by this Mr. Henderson.

THE LOUISVILLE, CINCINNATI AND LEXINGTON (SHORT LINE).

The Louisville & Frankfort Railroad Company was incorporated in 1847, and to it was trans- ferred by the State so much of the old Lexing- ton & Ohio road as lay between the two former places. The consideration for this was six per cent. of the valuation, to be paid before any dividends were paid to the stockholders of the new company. The division between the State capital and Lexington was also transferred by the State to a new company, the Lexington & Frankfort, chartered in 1848, for one thousand five hundred shares in this company's stock. This part of the old road, although in a weak sort of operation since 1835, could not yet be called completed, nor was it until the next year. The Louisville division was also finished by the new organization in 1851; and then, for the first time, traffic by rail passed through from Louis- ville to Lexington. The large sum of $275,000 was voted to this road by the city of Louisville. Colonel Durrett continues :

The working of the two separate ends of the road under independent companies not proving satisfactory to either, in 1856 the Legislature authorized them to consolidate. The Short-line was built under acts of the Legislature passed in 1866 and 1867, and the whole consolidated under the name of the Louisville, Cincinnati and Lexington Railroad Com- pany. And thus the whole line from Louisville to Lexing- ton got back again under a single company, as it originally was. The company now owns and controls two hundred and thirty-three miles of road, as follows: From Louisville to Lexington, ninety-four miles; from the Lagrange junction to Newport, known as the Short-line, eighty-one miles; New- port and Cincinnati bridge, one mile; Louisville Railroad Transfer, four miles; Elizabethtown, Lexington, and Big Sandy, thirty-four miles; and the Shelby county road, nine- teen miles. The whole has cost nearly $6,000,000, and the company's liabilities about reach that sum in the shape of common and preferred stocks, and bonded and floating debt,

The Short-Line now operates under lease the

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

Northern Division of the Cumberland & Ohio Railroad, from Shelbyville to Taylorsville, mak- ing 73.09 miles operated in this way by the road, besides 174.9 owned by it, or 247.99 in all. May 1, 1881, the new roadway on the Beargrass fill, prepared for it at the expense of the city, in order to secure the vacation of the right of way so long occupied on Jefferson street, was occu- pied, together with the spacious new brick freight depot on Water street, between First and Brook. Later in the season, a new passenger depot, built during the year on Water, between First and Second streets, was also occupied. Very nearly the whole of the main line, and much of the Lexington Branch, has recently been relaid with steel rails. The engines and cars of the road are built in part at its own shops in Louisville. The road is now in the great Louisville and Nashville combination, with General E. P. Alex- ander as president and S. S. Eastwood secretary.

A REMINISCENCE.

The following notes of the first of Louisville railroads is made in the City Directory for 1838-39:

The principal roads now completed and being completed, pointing to Louisville as a center, are the Lexington & Ohio railroad, which is destined to open a speedy communication with the Atlantic at Charleston [!].

The railroad intersects Jefferson street at its eastern limit near Wenzel; it then passes down Jefferson and continues from Sixth down Main street to Portland. The road is now in full operation from Lexington to Frankfort, and from Sixth street to Portland. The balance of the road, or a great por- tion of it, I understand, is under contract. Office corner Main and Sixth streets.

There were at this time in the public thought and expectancy railroad enterprises to Nashville, from Jeffersonville through Indiana, and to Alton, Illinois, through which St. Louis would be reached.

THE JEFFERSONVILLE, MADISON, AND INDIAN- APOLIS.

This is a consolidation of two roads, the Jeffer- sonville and the older Madison & Indianapolis, taking the combined name. The former was originally the Ohio and Indianapolis railroad, chartered by the Legislature of Indiana, January 20, 1846, and changed to the Jeffersonville rail- road three years after-January 15, 1849. It was first in full operation February 1, 1853. The other was chartered in June, 1842, and set in operation in October, 1847. It was afterwards

sold under foreclosure, and reorganized March 28, 1862, as the Indianapolis & Madison railroad company. May 1, 1866, the companies became one, and merged their lines into a single one, from Jefferson to Indianapolis. January 1, 1873, the whole was leased to the powerful Pennsyl- vania company, which now operates it.

The contribution of the city of Louisville to this enterprise, in 1851, was $200,000. It in- cludes the following lines: Main trunk, Louis- ville to Indianapolis, 110.28 miles; Madison di- vision, 45.9 ; Shelbyville branch, Shelbyville to Columbus, 23.28; New Albany branch, 6.44; total, 185.9. The Pennsylvania company also operate, in connection with it, 18.42 miles on the Shelby & Rush railroad, and 20.8 on the Cambridge Extension, making a grand total of 225.72 miles. Its capital stock is $2,000,000, principally owned by the Pennsylvania company. The total cost of its own lines (185.9 miles) was $6,508,712.77. The following is a statement of its gross earnings for nine recent years: 1872, $1,246,381.23; 1873, $1,363, 120,85; 1874, $1,- 345,243.67; 1875, $1,224, 147.25; 1876, $1, 171,- 874.69; 1877, $1, 176, 174.69; 1878, $1, 150,014 .- 92; 1879, $1,246,333.78; 1880, $1,388,564.91.

THE LOUISVILLE AND NASHVILLE.

The beginnings of this important highway to the southward were made by the charter of its company March 2, 1850. First and last, in various sums and at various times, the city of Louisville contributed a very large amount to this corporation, burdening itself severely with public debt for its and the city's benefit. In 1851 $1,000,000 of the people's money was sub- scribed to it, and a like sum four years later. The Lebanon branch received $275,000 the same year, $300,000 in 1863, and a round mil- lion in 1867; the Memphis branch $300,000 in 1858; the Richmond branch $100,000 in 1867; and the $2,000,000 voted to the Elizabethtown & Paducah railroad became also a practical ben- efit to the Nashville road, by its absorption of the Cecilian branch in 1877; thus completing a total of $6,275,000 public indebtedness carried for this one line and its belongings.

The main line, however, was not opened to Nashville until November, 1859. The following summary of additional historic facts is from the valuable pamphlet on the Industries of Louis- ville, published in 1881:

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

The Knoxville branch was opened to Livingston in Sep- tember, 1870. The Bardstown branch was constructed by the Bardstown & Louisville Railroad company, and came into possession of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad com- pany by lease, February 24, 1860, and by purchase in June, 1865. The Richmond branch was opened in November, 1868. The Cecilian branch was purchased January 19, 1877. The Glasgow branch (the Barren County railroad) is oper- ated under temporary lease. The Memphis branch was completed in September, 1860, and was operated in connec- tion with the Memphis, Clarksville & Louisville, and the Memphis & Ohio railroads; the first leased February 7, 1868, and purchased October 2, 1871, and the latter leased Septem- ber 1, 1867, and purchased June 30, 1872. The lease of the Nashville & Decatur railroad is dated May 4, 1871, and be- came operative July 1, 1872. The South & North Alabama railroad was built in the interest, and is under control, of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company, and was opened October 1, 1872. This company also acquired the middle division of the Cumberland & Ohio railroad, from Lebanon to Greensburg, 31.4 miles, and completed it in 1879. The company also bought the Tennessee Division of the St. Louis & Southeastern railroad, 47 miles, April 6, and the Kentucky Division of the same, 98.25 miles, May, 1879.

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History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I, Part 11

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co. Number of Pages: 814

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co.
Number of Pages: 814