How the National Road Bridge over the White River brought America to the West and Why the National Bicycle Greenway Needs this to be Celebrated
With a replica of the 1834 National Road bridge, for all the world to see, Indianapolis will be universally recognized, as the city that instilled American values in the West. And not St. Louis. In the 1800s when people arrived in the city known now as the gateway to the west, they were not fueled by Manifest Destiny. A boom town oasis, people went there to start over, to cash in on all the new opportunity found there. For them, St. Louis offered a new beginning. It was an island like city that stood apart from the rest of the nation and world.
As I show in my book, “How Indianapolis, Built America”, from 1834 until 1869 when the transcontinental railroad was built and 1870 when the Washington St Bridge was completed, half a million fortune seekers used the National Road Bridge to reach the Mississippi River. Thousands of them would settle in St. Louis.
In fact, the River City’s population doubled between 1835 and 1840 and again by 1845. Having grown to 78,000 people by 1850, some seventy percent of American-born St. Louisans were from Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, or Virginia,* all very close to the National Road corridor. By 1850, St. Louis had become the largest U.S. city west of Pittsburgh, PA, and the second-largest port in the country, with a commercial tonnage exceeded only by New York City.
By the time Early Americans arrived in St. Louis to go West, they got to a city that was bustling with its own economy. The only interest many there had in those going west was what they could sell them and that included steamboat trips up the Missouri River, 15 miles away. Towards that end, even though the Gold Rush travel books recommended leaving the river to go into the town of St. Louis, It was not necessary.
Once pioneers reached the Mississippi River, they would load their wagons onto ferries to reach St. Louis on the other side of the wide, ocean like river. Instead of going into town, there were those who got on the steamboats that would take them up the Missouri River, where roughly 300 miles later they would get on the trails with their wagons again in Kansas City. From there, they would continue their journey to the West.
While early pioneers could have reached the fertile farmland of Oregon or the Gold of California without stopping for overpriced, provisions in St. Louis (goods were expensive, scarce, and often poor quality. Horses and oxen, wagons, beef jerky, coffee, hard tack, dried apples, and even the requisite floppy hats worn by "real" gold-panners carried price tags several by-fold of those back home**), they could not have even reached the ferries of the Mississippi River or the steamboats of the Missouri River without the National Road Bridge over the White River in Indianapolis.
After the bridge was built, the Indianapolis riverfront industry expanded the production of its mills to help clothe and feed the growing numbers of people in the new West. Using the White River for power, they sent countless sacks of flour, cornmeal, and cotton, etc. over the National Road Bridge.
During the bridge’s last decade of use, Kingan Pork teamed up with Indianapolis based, Van Camp (the largest vegetable packing company in the world, they also supplied the Civil War), and the early Teamsters to send hundreds of thousands of cans of pork and beans over the bridge on Conestoga wagons, the 16-wheeler of its day. Kingan. the world’s largest pork producer. also shipped many tons of pork, which did not require refrigeration, to St. Louis and the settlements in the West over the National Road Bridge. They did so until 1870 when the Washington Street bridge replaced it
Besides the products from the riverfront industries, other goods from the Indianapolis region that found their way on to the National Road Bridge ranged from heavy tools, harnesses and leather shoes, to fine china, perfume, beads, buttons, and even kegs of whiskey. The fact that the National Road Bridge could support regular processions of the wagons that carried all this, is noteworthy.
Made of poplar, the National Road Bridge was built bullet proof strong. For years on end, it was able to handle regular cavalcades of wagons that almost looked like they were connected to each other. Many of them were Conestoga wagons. Each of which carried as much as 8 tons of freight along with also the weight of the teams of as many as six horses or oxen that pulled them.
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Although the National Road Bridge was sadly dismantled in 1902, we can do what the people in Greenup, Illinois (population, 1,365), 119 miles away, did about their bridge which had also disappeared. Even though it was almost half as long as the Indianapolis bridge, it crossed over the Embarrass River also on the National Road,
In their case, local citizens and Greenup city officials did not want the unusable bridge replacement that was there removed. Due to their work to designate this section of the old road as a National Scenic Byway, the National Road Association began efforts to revive the Greenup Historic Business District. Working together, these groups were able to get a grant from the Illinois Department of Transportation to build an exact replica
We opened above with the bridge that resulted. While only 200 feet long (the National Road Bridge was 350 feet), it was built according to the original plans which were found in the University of Illinois library. It looks similar to the pictures we have been able to find of the Indianapolis bridge because it was built the same year. As such, we can likely use these building directives.
The replica was completed April 25, 2001. Final Contract Cost $2,823,429.45
Far more than restoring a scenic byway we genuinely need to replace one of the most important constructions in the history of America.
The National Bicycle Greenway is very interested in rebuilding the National Road Bridge over the White River because it shines a very bright spotlight on the outsized part that this bridge helped Indianapolis play in shaping American consciousness, as well as in how it traveled. Because it played such a key role in building America, we need for Indianapolis to be seen as the trendsetter it once was.
As Kingan Reliable Mets and Van Camp, continued to hold great sway over what the people of the West ate, the National Road Bridge perpetrated a momentum that continued into the Roaring 20’s.
With Diamond Chain (its impact was so huge, it got a whole chapter in my book, “How Indianapolis built America”) located along the riverfront near the bridge, Indianapolis was like the Silicon Valley of the 19th Century as it led the Industrial Revolution that took people off of the farm and put them in the factory. With the largest interurban train system in the world (from 1904 until 1941 the Indianapolis Traction Terminal handled 500 trains per day and seven million passengers per year), it brought the workers in the outlying agricultural areas into the city. With the car headlight it distributed to the world, it made it possible for people to travel to and from work in the dark. And with the largest automobile manufacturing industry on the planet, it would go on in 1914, to spawn the first Coast to Coast Highway that kept America fed with Indianapolis values.
And when it is recognized as the leader it once was, this city will also be honored as the wealthy city it used to be, quite arguably this nation’s richest. Large numbers of people will come here to see the bridge and visit the nearby museums that shed light on the wood-covered water crossing. They will come to see the city of Indianapolis. The art its former wealthy ways made possible will also make it the object of much travel.
In the same way St. Louis has received a large number of federal resources that have built tourism around the notion of it being the Gateway to the West, now that the National Road Bridge has been discovered, we need no to show how it was this construction that helped Indianapolis build St. Louis, as well as the rest of the West well beyond it.
And when people come here, they will get to enjoy the natural beauty, great peace and the soothing quiet that has been brought about by Greenways. And as these visitors return to their homes with this experience, it will reverberate in towns and cities all throughout the United States. The people of this land will work to rebuild America with Greenways following the example Indianapolis has set.
While New York City has the Statue of liberty to symbolize America’s freedom and independence from the British Empire and San Francisco has the Golden Gate Bridge, which, according to Britannica, is a symbol of the power and progress of the United States, with a reconstructed National Road Bridge, we do not have to fabricate a Great Arch to show who we are. With the replica we foresee, Indianapolis will be seen as the genuine broker of Manifest Destiny, the bona fide Gateway to Westward expansion
A reconstructed National Road Bridge will symbolize opportunity, the opportunity of going West to create a better life at a point in time when the White River stood out as the dividing line between East and West. In joining the two Americas, the National Road Bridge preceded the Transcontinental Railroad by 35 years, almost two generations, when it crossed this waterway in 1834!
In the end, a reconstructed National Road bridge will help Indianapolis reclaim its lost pride. This as it gives our efforts here at the National Bicycle Greenway authority as we work to make Indianapolis the Bike Capital of America, It will show, for example, why a bike road to the top rated airport in North America is necessary and how other cities can follow the example it sets.
It will also interest the nation in the Gateway Festivals we want to annually produce next to the replica bridge on the one that replaced it (that is now a promenade). It will make Indianapolis a receiving hub for National Mayors’ Rides coming from the nearby cities of Chicago, Cincinnati, Columbus and Pittsburgh. These are just a few of the ways in which we can show why Indianapolis is the home of the National Bicycle Greenway. When it is all said and done, it will be the discovery and reconstruction of The National Road Bridge that made it possible for us to reconnect the nation with people power!
Proclamation Draft
WHEREAS, the National Road from Washington DC entered the frontier of the West, where there were no roads, after crossing the White River in 1834; and,
WHEREAS, before the river was widened, as a wood covered bridge, this halfway spot on the Washington Street bridge/promenade marks where it met the bridge that had been built 36 years before; and,
WHEREAS, the National Road Bridge was adjacent to the first Indianapolis cabin and stimulated commerce on the Indianapolis riverfront which used the White River for power to send food and and other resources to the West; and,
WHEREAS, the wood covered bridge sent over half a million people off to the West in search of gold and other riches; and,
WHEREAS, the National Road bridge set in place the momentum that would civilize all of America; and,
WHEREAS, the National Road Bridge, was sadly dismantled in 1902,
By the authority vested in me as the Mayor of Indianapolis, I hereby declare this to be the location of the original Gateway to the Frontier