This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
Animals who kill people are often shot. Humans who do so are tried in court. But what does one do with an inanimate killer? Here's a possibility.
In 1854, the first railroad tracks from the east reached the Mississippi River at Rock Island, beginning a duel to the death between steamboat men and the railroads. Two years later the first bridge across the Mississippi sent the railroad west toward the Pacific. That bridge became the weapon of choice for the duel.
Steamboat men claimed that the railroad had deliberately placed the bridge at a place and angle across the Rock Island Rapids that made it dangerous for boats passing the swing span.
On May 6th, 1856, as if to prove the point, a small steamer, The Effie Afton, bound for St. Paul crashed against a pier while passing the bridge. The boat sank and the bridge was immobilized by fire. Steamboat interests sued the railroad, claiming they were there first.
The Rock Island Bridge soon became known as the "gate of death," and it lived up to its reputation for wrecking steamboats as the legal battle over the bridge wound its way up through the courts.
The spring of 1861 was an especially tricky one for currents around the bridge piers. By May, 12 huge log rafts and four steamboats had wrecked at the bridge. On May 9th, as the legendary Captain Daniel Smith Harris was taking his Grey Eagle past the bridge, a wayward current sank the boat. Seven people drowned. Enough was enough. Among the many voices calling for the railroad to be tried for murder was the editor of the Rock Island Argus.
A Rock Island grand jury voted 13 to 10 to indict. However, the jury recessed overnight, and a second vote the next morning was 11 to 9 to indict—some members being absent. A majority of 12 votes was needed.
The Civil War was only a month old that May. Perhaps it was the excitement of the war that saved the Rock Island Bridge—the only bridge that has come within one vote of being indicted for murder.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
