Lost Road Bridge over Mississippi near Muscatine, IA

(Bridge Hunter, Quad-City Times)

 

Bridges Now and Then posted
The Muscatine High Bridge across the Mississippi River between Muscatine, Iowa, and Rock Island County, Illinois, photo from 1909. (Musser Public Library)

Don Gerdts posted
The old HIGH BRIDGE in Muscatine

Bridge Hunter explains that the "bridge collapsed in 1899 during winter when a piece of ice pushed into the third steel cylindrical pier on the Illinois side, causing an approach span to fall. They replaced all cylindrical piers with masonry piers and reset the bridge."

Cropped from photo from Bridge Hunter

Note the collapsed span on the left side. This is a good view of the cantilevered span.

Anne Wieskamp Collier posted

Bridge photos

A post from from a member earlier today (Tiffany) with photos of the old high bridge is causing some confusion. The bridge photos are from two different years. The ones with the ice were from the first collapse of a section of the bridge in 1899. The photo with trucks are from 1952. We appreciate her sharing the photos. Scroll down just a bit to her post to get a better view of her photos.

The bridge was built to accomodate horse pulled wagons, not the heavy trucks and semis that would be crossing it in later years.

From an article by By Dr. Frank Griggs, Dist. M. ASCE, posted in Structure Magazine on September 2, 2025 (https://www.structuremag.org/article/muscatine-iowa-bridge-1891/) "...... one span collapsed in 1899 when ice pushed one of the iron cylinders out of plumb and the span slipped off its support. A second failure occurred in 1956 when a vehicle collided with one of the trusses causing a span to collapse."

Thankfully, no one died in either incident. However, I believe a horse died as a result of injuries due to the collapse in 1899.

Tiffany Beck: Anne Wieskamp Collier Thank you so much for clarifying for me. I didn't even think about it when I took the pics and posted them. There were hundreds of pics from the attic to go through and I just quickly snapped a few to share without thinking ahead. 😆

Anne Wieskamp Collier: Tiffany Beck I was fairly acquainted with the two different stories of the collapse. I hadn't seen those close ups of the ones from 1956. Good photos! Sounds like you have your work cut out for you going through photos.😉

David Taylor posted two photos with the description: "Muscatine High Bridge, Iowa, Illinois, Steamboat WakeRobin  [The description continues with the history of the steamer."

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