1869-1873 Collapsed Truesdell Bridge over Rock River in Dixon, IL

(Archived Bridge Hunter; Bridge Hunter; Satellite, this is the location of the historic marker.)

When I did a Google search for "dixon il people bridge" to research the "People Bridge," most of the results were about this tragedy.

StructureMag

hmdb, cropped

WTTW
The Silver Bridge collapse on the Ohio River also had 46 fatalities. But it nine injuries compared to the 56 injuries cause by this collapse.

“It’s not as though the bridge just collapsed and went straight down,” says Tom Wadsworth, 70, a retired magazine editor and expert on the calamity. “It turns over on top of these people. ... As the (Chicago) Tribune said, the truss ‘fell over with the weight and imprisoned the doomed in an iron cage with which they sunk and from which there was no escape.’”

Wadsworth wouldn’t be telling the story had Gertie Wadsworth, his great-grandmother, not survived. Family lore holds that as Goble, 51, plunged to her death, she tossed the toddler into the river beyond the reach of the failing superstructure. The tot was rescued downstream.

...

“You could look down and see their faces. They couldn’t get to the surface because all that iron was on top of them,” Wadsworth said. “It’s frightening to look down, but to look up and to see daylight, to be only 12 inches from air?”

[WTTW]

In better times.

BridgeHunter

This shows that the bridge could easily hold 200 people if they are distributed across the bridge. The bridge collapsed because the 200 spectators were concentrated on the sidewalk on the west side near the north end of the bridge.

BridgeHunter

"Before the opening, the bridge was test loaded in a fashion by placing “four harnessed teams hauling stone, a load of flour, and a large group of bystanders, all weighing at least 45 tons.”" The City Engineer advised the city council to not accept Truesdell's bid. They had 13 other proposals to choose from. In fact, some on the council were accused of accepting bribes. But that was never proven. [StructureMag]

It hurts my head that the authorities would use people as part of a load test. What if the bridge failed the test?