The crossings: a succession of bridges at each site

1831 TO THE PRESENT SPANS

The first crossing was a ferry, and it stood where La Salle Avenue stands: The crossing place at old Water Street, now La Salle Avenue, is one of the first spots where the river was crossed in this area; in 1831 Nehemiah B. Griffith received the first ferry license there. The ferry gave way to a wooden covered bridge. In 1865 a tornado partly destroyed it, and it was rebuilt — without its roof. The next bridge at the site was a suspension or chain bridge, and it ended in the river when a worker accidentally drove a pin out of its eastern end and the whole structure dropped. The iron age at the crossing is a truss whose year the record prints two ways: the bridge inventory carries a pin-connected Pratt through truss built in 1884 by P. E. Lane of Chicago, 330 feet long in two spans with a main span of 129 feet, while the National Register record gives the bridge as built in 1885 by the Chicago Bridge and Iron Company, with P. E. Lane named beside it.

Both stand; what is not disputed is the truss's second life. In 1906 it was moved bodily north to carry Darden Road over the river, where it stands today, listed on the National Register in 1985, closed to vehicles since its last closure in 1970 and crossed now by the Darden Road Trail; Darden Road's traffic uses a bridge opened beside the story, in 1999. The bridge that replaced the truss at La Salle Avenue in 1907 is the one the city still drives: a three-span concrete arch of the Melan type, 279 feet long and 51 feet wide, built by the Marsh Bridge Company of Des Moines on a contract of $84,750, its design attributed by the National Register documentation to A. J. Hammond, South Bend's city engineer, and possibly the only bridge built to the Concrete Steel Engineering Company's patents. It was listed on the National Register in 1999 and rehabilitated in 2006.

The two great concrete arches of the next decade completed the downtown crossings: The Jefferson Boulevard bridge, four spans and 490 feet of reinforced concrete filled arch on Melan-type steel ribs, was designed by city engineer Alonzo J. Hammond to carry not only vehicles and pedestrians but a two-track interurban line, and built by Scribner and Heyworth of Chicago for $119,000, plus $6,600 for piling; the surveys date it 1905, and it was rehabilitated in 2004. The Michigan Street bridge — the Leeper Bridge, for the park it serves — followed in 1914: a three-span reinforced concrete filled arch designed by Charles W. Cole, whom the state bridge survey identifies as the city engineer of Mishawaka, and built by the Kuert Contracting Company of Indianapolis, faced in Bedford limestone and decorated after George Kessler's City Beautiful designs for the park. Its length is printed two ways in the record: the state survey's own description gives 276 feet, the bridge inventory derived from the national database gives 323; both stand. It replaced on its site a 300-foot pin-connected Pennsylvania through truss of 1881, which had been modified about 1906 to carry the interurban, and it was itself rehabilitated in 2006. The river also took its toll of the early bridges directly: the National Register's East Bank documentation preserves the great ice gorge of 1881, when the river's ice destroyed bridges at the bend — the crossings' own entry in the flood record below.

The twentieth century filled in the roster east and west: The Twyckenham Drive bridge was built in 1929 and renovated about 1982 — a date carried by the city's documented bridge-by-bridge local survey, printed at that strength. Two concrete arches of 1940 frame the Notre Dame side of the city: the Angela Boulevard bridge, a three-span closed-spandrel deck arch of 257 feet built by the H. L. Maddocks Company to William S. Moore's work, and the Ironwood Drive bridge, at 479 feet the longest of the city's concrete arches, a three-span open-spandrel deck arch built by the National Concrete Company of Indianapolis. The Sample Street crossing is a postwar public work whose taking of ground is in this record's Military section: under an agreement of 13 April 1960 among the city, the county and the state highway commission, the city undertook to build the Sample Street Bridge and dedicated rights of way that included the property of the Naval Armory; the bridge the city drives today is a plain modern steel span.

The railroads cross on their own structures: the northern trunk line's bridge of 1926, a six-span deck girder by the McClintic-Marshall Company of Pittsburgh, and the Grand Trunk Western's bridge of 1938, its concrete-skinned spans carrying the line over the highway, the river and Northside Boulevard with the road's name painted on them; a converted railroad bridge of 1926 carries the Coal Line Trail, told in Trails. The newest crossings are for feet: the 600-foot pedestrian bridge of 2006 that ties IU South Bend to its River Crossing housing across the water, and the trail bridge at Darden Road over the moved truss of 1884 or 1885. One crossing's building record was not reached and is named as a gap rather than guessed: the Cleveland Road (State Road 23) bridge at the city's northeast edge, a modern state crossing whose construction date the surveys consulted do not state.

The river's first bridge was not South Bend's, and the record says so plainly: The state historical marker at Mishawaka records that the first bridge across the St. Joseph River was built in that city in 1837, at a cost of $2,499 raised by popular subscription, replacing a ferry that had run since 1834; it was succeeded there by a red covered bridge in 1846, an iron truss in 1874 and the present concrete bridge in 1907. South Bend's first bridge, the covered wooden span at Water Street, belongs to the years after its 1831 ferry, and the exact year of its building is not fixed in the record reached — it is printed here as the ferry's successor, undated, rather than dressed in a borrowed year. The twin city's bridge line is Mishawaka's own; it is printed once, here, so that no reader of this roster mistakes whose first bridge was first.

Sources:

1. National Register documentation and the DHPA historic bridge survey, as carried in the bridge inventory record — the La Salle Avenue crossing succession (Griffith's 1831 ferry license; the covered bridge, its 1865 tornado damage and roofless rebuilding; the chain bridge's collapse), the Water Street truss (1885, Chicago Bridge and Iron Company with P. E. Lane; moved to Darden Road 1906; National Register 1985), the La Salle Avenue bridge of 1907 (Marsh Bridge Company, $84,750; design attributed to A. J. Hammond; National Register 1999), the Jefferson Boulevard bridge (1905; $119,000 plus $6,600 piling; Scribner and Heyworth; Hammond's two-track interurban design), the Michigan Street bridge (1914; Charles W. Cole per the DHPA survey; Kuert Contracting; 276 feet in the survey's text against 323 in the inventory; its 1881 Pennsylvania truss predecessor).
2. HistoricBridges.org's inventoried record — the Water Street truss as built 1884 by P. E. Lane of Chicago, 330 feet, main span 129 feet (printed against the Register's 1885); the Angela Boulevard (1940, 257 feet, H. L. Maddocks Company) and Ironwood Drive (1940, 479 feet, National Concrete Company) arches; the 1926 Norfolk Southern deck girder (McClintic-Marshall); the Darden Road vehicular bridge opened 1999.
3. City of South Bend ordinance record, July 1962 — the Sample Street Bridge agreement of 13 April 1960 and the dedication of rights of way including the Naval Armory property; this record's Military section (Ordinance 4561, March 1963) for the ground the bridge took.
4. The documented local bridge survey (Jim Grey, Downtown South Bend bridges) — the Twyckenham Drive bridge (1929, renovated about 1982), the present Sample Street span, and the Grand Trunk Western bridge of 1938, printed at survey-blog strength.
5. Indiana University South Bend, campus tour publication — the 600-foot pedestrian bridge of 2006 to River Crossing.
6. Indiana Historical Bureau marker 71.1968.2 (Mishawaka) — the river's first bridge, 1837, $2,499 by subscription, and its succession, boundary-printed as Mishawaka's.
7. This record's Industrial Revolution section — the great ice gorge of 1881 from the National Register's East Bank documentation, cross-referenced.