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The massive railroad bridge that links Belpre and Parkersburg was a huge engineering marvel when construction started in the 1860s. When it opened in 1871 it was the longest bridge of its type in the world.
Prior to the bridge being built, rail cars were loaded onto barges to cross the river. The construction of the bridge would allow passengers to travel from St. Louis to the East Coast without the need to change rail cars.
The bridge was a major undertaking and required a massive amount of iron and stone. The length of the bridge is 7,140 feet with 4,397 feet of the that being the open iron work and the rest of it being the embankment approaches that lead up to it.
The bridge has 46 spans between Sixth and Avery streets in Parkersburg and the embankment in Belpre. The largest spans are those crossing the river. The two largest spans each measure nearly 350 feet in length.
The entire bridge sits on top of dozens of stone piers that required 50,000 cubic yards of stone to construct. The bridge used today still sits on piers constructed 145 years ago.
The Keystone Bridge Co. constructed the bridge. The Pittsburgh-based company built bridges around the country. Founded in 1865 by Andrew Carnegie, the company used material produced by Carnegie’s giant steel-making operation.
The original iron bridge is not the one seen today.
Heavier and faster trains quickly made the original iron spans obsolete. The smaller Bollman trusses over land were replaced between 1898 and 1900 with the riveted Warren trusses that can be seen today. The six river spans were replaced with the more modern steel structures in 1904 and 1905.
One of those spans looks vastly different than the other five.
On Jan 7, 1972 two workmen from the Martin Oil Co. were pumping gasoline from a barge as it passed below the bridge. A spark from an electric pump ignited the fumes and two of the barges exploded, killing the workmen and sinking the two barges. The explosion injured 11 other people and shattered windows in Belpre and Parkersburg.
Debris from the barges damaged the train bridge and the nearby automotive bridge, closing both of them.
The nearly 70-year-old rail span directly above the explosion was heavily damaged and was replaced with the non-matching span still in use.
For years the bridge was used to deliver mile-long coal trains to American Electric Power’s Muskingum River Plant near Beverly. Those trips ended when the plant closed in early 2015. Today, smaller trains make regular trips across the bridge to serve the other factories that line the Ohio side of the river.
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