We hit several towns along the lower Des Moines River in Iowa last weekend to examine the economic ties that riverboats once served with the area and St. Louis. The first town, Bentonsport, was laid out in 1839 and was named after Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton. It actually reached a population of 1,000 and…
Tag: Bridges
Viaducts, Trestles and Bridges, Chouteau’s Landing
Wandering around the vacant lot where the former Powell Square Building was located before it was demolished in Chouteau’s Landing, I was struck at just how much infrastructure there is clogging this part of the city. Perhaps it is a necessary evil, needed to move commerce and industry around the center of the city for…
The River des Peres Along Manchester Avenue
I’ve long been intrigued but sort of flummoxed by the industrial valley that lies along the Middle River Des Peres Valley, paralleled by Manchester Avenue, which is really the second, or “New” Manchester Road, which replaced the “Old” one, now signed as Southwest Avenue. There was and is industry, but it was never “cool” industry…
East St. Louis Updates
I was in East St. Louis recently and thought I would look and see how things are doing. There’s some good news and some bad. The bad news is that continued disinvestment has led to infrastructure having to be condemned, as is the case of the 26th Street Bridge, a major conduit for traffic over…
View from the City Museum Roof
I was invited to a special event at the City Museum and when I made it up to the roof, I realized that the sunset was casting downtown and the rest of the city in a wonderful light. I waited until dusk and then took many of the same views again. Above and below is…
The Confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, Cairo
We took a break from exploring the town and headed down to Fort Defiance Park, which is at the very tip of the peninsula where the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers is located, to have lunch. It is important to note that the actual Civil War fort was not located here as this…
The Missouri River at St. Charles
We next went down to the Missouri River, which of course has been highly modified by the Army Corps of Engineers. There is the famous railroad bridge to the east, and I normally would have consulted Bridgehunter.com, but there is a new update about what the heck happened to that valuable website. It’s interesting that…
Near North Riverfront, Early Fall 2023
Update: The building in the background was completely destroyed by fire on February 3, 2024. Oh, the Near North Riverfront! So potential and so much not going on. Well, a warehouse goes up in flames every so often, so that happens. There doesn’t seem to be any long term plans. I do like the new…
Leaving, Youngstown
After surveying the remnants of what had once been the workplace of literally tens of thousands of Americans, I worked my way out of Youngstown, passing through the neighborhoods where they once lived. I saw St. Nicholas Byzantine Catholic Church, which alludes to the Eastern European origins of many of the immigrants who once flooded…
The Gates of Hell, Cleveland
Corrigan-McKinney rose from the valley much further south from the Flats, and its presence still dominates the broad expanse along the Cuyahoga. Founded by James Corrigan, Jr. , thousands of trains must have rumbled up from the lake over the last century filled with taconite and limestone to feed the steel mill’s hungry furnaces. Note…