BNSF/Santa Fe Bridge over Kansas River in Topeka, KS

(Archived Bridge Hunter; Satellite)

The Rock Island Bridge also suffered flood damage.

Bob Finan posted

Posted in our Group six years ago by Larry Broadbent - regarding the 1951 Kaw River Flood in Topeka, Kansas…

(During the summer of 1951, heavy rainfall in the Kaw River basin caused extensive flooding. Some areas received 16 inches of rain from July 9-13. As the crest of the floodwaters rapidly moved down the river, the cities of Manhattan, Topeka and Lawrence suffered severe damage.)

“…Using both photographic evidence and information from a journal kept by William A. Gibson, Sr., a Santa Fe employee in Topeka, identification is possible for nine of the ten engines used on the bridge during the 1951 flood in Topeka.  Going from south to north, and with an asterisk indicating as to which three engines went into the river, the locomotives in which Santa Fe pinned its hopes for saving the bridge were: 3164 (2-8-2, 3163 (2-8—2), 1083 (2-6-2), *4076 (2-8-2), *3167 (2-8-2), *1035 (2-6-2), 3270 (2-8-2), 4039 (2-8-2), 3195 (2-8-2) and unknown but had the 4085 coal tender attached.  The locomotive 4085 locomotive was converted to an oil burner prior to 1951 , and was still in service at the time of the flood…”

3D Satellite

Street View

Dylan Edwards Flickr, License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA)
This area is in the planning stages of becoming Topeka's Riverfront Park.
[Currently, it is rip-rap on the side of a levee on which River Road is built.]

Anonymous comment on Bridge Hunter:

In past years I did much research on the 1951 flood. The spans in the river were collapsed the evening of July 14th, 1951. This bridge was built in 1903 to replace a bridge that was completely destroyed in that flood. In fact, all bridges over the Kansas river were destroyed in the flood of 1903 with the exception of the 1900 built MoPac bridge in Kansas City, which still stands today and is in use. If you search historic images and special collections, aerial photographs exist of this bridge swamped in the July 14th flood waters with weighted railcars and locomotives parked on it in effort to weigh it down. The following morning, additional ones were taken and the center spans are missing. The paper in Topeka published an article too that day I'd read with photos detailing how this bridge and its companion AT&SF; bridge downstream about a 1/2 mile both lost center spans and all the locomotives just hours apart when the water was at maximum discharge levels.

AT&SF; pieced their bridge back together with different span types and one of them is clearly shorter as well. Rock Island rebuilt this bridge with identical spans (as you pointed out). Much like ATSF, RI left the damaged spans and submerged locomotives in the river where they still remain. The Kaw is also not classified as a "navigable waterway" by the Coast Guard so removing those spans would be a waste of money, and we all know that railroads don't like spending that. RI however did go a step ahead of ATSF, and installed a flood jack system (the sheds atop those arches) and reinforce the piers on this bridge in years after. Three bridges in KC (one also owned by RI at the time) also have a flood jack system that were installed after the 1951 flood. These were most recently used in the flood of 1993.

In closing, I've never seen any photos or info on this bridge's predecessor, but I can say that the spans in the river were built in 1903 with the bridge and not from an earlier one. If looked at in person (from Topeka Blvd) and google earth, it is clear they are Warren trusses as is the rest of the bridge. If I had to guess I'd say the first one was probably an old lattice truss similar to the 1899 Blue River bridge in Manhattan or perhaps even a wood pile structure. Whichever the case, the 1903 flood was much less severe in comparison to '51 or '93, so it was pretty weak to have been completely wiped out. Sorry to ramble on, wanted to share at least what I knew on the subject....... :-)