Why Did It Close? - 'America's Oldest Bridge'

I am here on Wheeling Island West Virginia and today we're going to take a look at the Wheeling Island Bridge which is also the first bridge in the United States over 1,000 ft long and was at one time the longest suspension bridge in the entire world so basically this was really the first major bridge in the United States and we're going to check it out now before you ask I know this bridge has a bunch of closed signs on it but this is only for cars it's still open and perfectly safe for pedestrians to walk on there's a two ton weight limit on this bridge as it was built in the 1800s and basically people kept defying this Rule and in fact accidents were caused on this bridge so they just decided to shut it down however this bridge is still perfectly safe to walk and ride a bike on um they just don't want people pushing the limit anymore and potentially ruining a historical landmark so this bridge was designed by Charles ellot Jr and an interesting fact about ellot Jr is if you notice the date of his life he actually did die fight the Civil War and he was a pretty important hero but he was also very important to engineering and like the early infrastructure the United States I mean this bridge was a pretty big experiment of the time and although there were suspension bridges before him um and built before him there was nothing like this in the United States before like this was truly groundbreaking on this side of the Atlantic so construction on this bridge began the year 1847 after a long drawn out legal battle to see if it was even legal to build a bridge as um people tried to use the equity Clause especially by Steamboat captains to prevent the bridge being built because they believe it infringed on their right to be able to navigate the waterways steamboats were the most uh advanced form of transportation we had on Rivers at this time and as this was the Ohio River this was kind of seen as like an actual Highway like we'd see like a highway today like on the bridge you see behind me and back then um a lot of ships had Smoke Stacks in order to like run their steam engines and a lot of steam ship operators basically tried to hold up this Bridge's Construction in the Supreme Court because they believed violated their rights to be able to operate on the rivers so for that reason what was originally going to be a 60ft tall bridge and have a 60ft clearance above the river it was later redesigned to have a 90ft clearance above the river that's why this bridge just seems so high compared to the trusses is because it was originally not supposed to be this tall so before America had major infrastructure like this a lot of Engineers had to go abroad and studying in a foreign University to be able to get the education to build something like this and uh Charles ellot actually went to France in order to get the expertise to figure out how to build suspension bridges which were very all new and um very Advanced for the time and he wound up winning the contract over uh John a robling who was a German engineer who came from Germany and he began construction on the bridge in the year 1847 after years of red tape and was completed after just 2 years in the year 1849 so already in 1854 just a few years after this bridge was even finished there was already damage due to high winds and since uh suspension bridges are very new at the time there was a lot of concern that the bridge was going to be unsafe but fortunately Charles ellot was able to come back and reopen the bridge after just 3 months of construction now I'm sure it's not surprising as old as this bridge is is that they've had to make many modernization efforts to you know make it up to the modern infrastructure standards and while this Bridge originally had like a solid sidewalk and and a solid Road it now is an open Ste great to increase wind resistance as I mean they try to keep the Bridge open as long as possible and that reduced The Strain that was actually put on all these beams and wires however it is a little scary and usually I like to longboard across a bridge but I'm not going to lie it is just a little a little too scary to ride my skateboard and uh carry a camera and try to shoot so unlike pretty much any other bridge in the United States today this suspension bridge still has wooden rails up here like you can see the divots in it and the fact that they repainted it red a bunch of times it's a little bit disturbing to think that this bridge is being held together by a bunch of metal cables and wooden planks but I mean it's still here now one of your questions might be why was this first major suspension bridge across the Appalachians built in Wheeling West Virginia of all places and you got to understand that Wheeling West Virginia wasn't always the small town it is today in fact in 1840 Wheeling was the second largest city in the state of Virginia and yes that's correct Virginia when this bridge was first built this was still part of the state of Virginia as West Virginia seceded from the state of Virginia during the Civil War war and would continue to remain loyal to the union partly because uh the Union's transport system was a major part of their income at the time so this bridge was actually originally built by the Virginia state engineer Corps so the construction of this bridge and Wheeling was incredibly important for this city the route from east to west around this area would have gone from Philadelphia to Cincinnati and the City of Wheeling began to be bypassed on the National Road and there was a ferry going across the river at a different point point so this really needed to be constructed right here so the thing that makes me a little sad about this bridge is that it is still the oldest American suspension bridge that is still standing and still operational today however just the size and scale of bridges has just been has just absolutely dwarfed this one over the years even rival engineer John robling bridge in Brooklyn New York or even his in Cincinnati um is more famous than this one as this bridge was just kind of Forgotten even though was a huge land mark and had more of an impact probably than any other major bridge in the United States other than maybe the Golden Gate Bridge it's just kind of a forgotten piece of US History much like wheeling's impact on US History was in the early 1800s um and if you ever pass by Wheeling or even you go through West Virginia just keep in mind that this used to be a pretty booming and important part of the United States and it really shouldn't be forgotten history as it kind of is today so Not only was this bridge a major landmark in American engineering it was also a major landmark in the connectivity of the United States as a whole this was the first time that a part of the US highway system was able to cross the Ohio river and this was really the first real Crossing it had and this was the first time the uh American highway system really ran all the way across the Appalachians uninterrupted into what became the Midwest in the Western United States so I mean this was a first really big step for our country to complete something like this it really went on to show that uh geography wasn't going to stop the United States from growing and continuing to expand so I mean this is is really a monument as much as is a bridge to uh the growth of America and the birth of a new nation that that was going to be Innovative and just continue growing so if you ever want to tell your friends a fun fact you can tell them that the oldest bridge in the United States over a, ft long is located in Wheeling West Virginia thank you so much for watching and hopefully I will see you on the next one