The Chicago River is a system of rivers and canals with a combined length of 156 miles (251 km) that runs through the city of Chicago, including its center. Though not especially long, the river is notable because it is one of the reasons for Chicago's geographic importance: the related Chicago Portage is a link between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River Basin, and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico.
The Illinois and Michigan Canal connected the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. In Illinois, it ran 96 miles (154 km) from the Chicago River in Bridgeport, Chicago to the Illinois River at LaSalle-Peru. The canal crossed the Chicago Portage, and helped establish Chicago as the transportation hub of the United States, before the railroad era. It was opened in 1848. Its function was largely replaced by the wider and shorter Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal in 1900, and it ceased transportation operations with the completion of the Illinois Waterway in 1933.
A bascule bridge is a moveable bridge with a counterweight that continuously balances a span, or leaf, throughout its upward swing to provide clearance for boat traffic. It may be single- or double-leafed.
John Alexander Low Waddell was an American civil engineer and prolific bridge designer, with more than a thousand structures to his credit in the United States, Canada, as well as Mexico, Russia, China, Japan, and New Zealand. Waddell’s work set standards for elevated railroad systems and helped develop materials suitable for large span bridges. His most important contribution was the development of the steam-powered high-lift bridge. His design was first used in 1893 for Chicago's South Halsted Street Lift-Bridge over the Chicago River; he went on to design more than 100 other movable bridges, and the company he founded continues to make movable bridges of various types. Waddell was a widely respected writer on bridge design, and an advocate of quality training of engineers. Many of Waddell's surviving bridges are now considered historic landmarks.
The Baltimore and Ohio Chicago Terminal Railroad is a terminal railroad in the Chicago area, formerly giving various other companies access to (Chicago's) Grand Central Station. It also served to connect those railroads for freight transfers, and is now controlled by CSX Corporation, the successor to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
The Illinois Waterway system consists of 336 miles (541 km) of navigable water from the mouth of the Calumet River at Chicago to the mouth of the Illinois River at Grafton, Illinois. It is a system of rivers, lakes, and canals which provide a shipping connection from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico via the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. The Illinois and Michigan Canal (I&M) opened in 1848. In 1900, the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal replaced the I&M and reversed the flow of the Chicago River so it no longer flowed into Lake Michigan. The United States Army Corps of Engineers maintains a 9-foot-deep (2.7 m) navigation channel in the waterway. The waterway's complex northern section is referred to in various contexts for study and management as the Chicago Area Waterway System (CAWS).
The Fort Madison Toll Bridge is a tolled, swinging truss bridge over the Mississippi River that connects Fort Madison, Iowa, and unincorporated Niota, Illinois. Rail traffic occupies the lower deck of the bridge, while two lanes of road traffic occupy the upper deck. The double-decker bridge, about a mile long with a swing span of 525 feet (160 m), was the longest and largest double-deck swing-span bridge in the world, when constructed in 1927. It replaced an inadequate combination roadway/single-track bridge completed in 1887. The main river crossing consists of four 270-foot (82 m) Baltimore through truss spans and a swing span made of two equal arms, 266 feet (81 m) long. In 1999, it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places under the title, Fort Madison Bridge, ID number 99001035. It was also documented as survey number IA-62 by the Historic American Engineering Record, archived at the Library of Congress. Construction and photographic details were recorded at the time in Scientific American magazine.
The Delair Bridge is a railroad bridge with a vertical-lift section that crosses the Delaware River between Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Pennsauken Township, New Jersey, just south of the Betsy Ross Bridge. The two-track bridge is part of Conrail Shared Assets Operations and is jointly used by Norfolk Southern Railway and CSX Transportation freight trains, as well as by the New Jersey Transit Atlantic City Line service.
The Burlington Bridge is a vertical-lift railroad bridge across the Mississippi River between Burlington, Iowa, and Gulfport, Illinois, United States. It is currently owned by BNSF Railway and carries two tracks which are part of BNSF's Chicago–Denver main line.
The Franklin–Orleans Street Bridge, commonly known as the Franklin Street Bridge, is a bascule bridge over the Chicago River, in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It was built in October 1920, and is located directly southwest of the Merchandise Mart. Connecting the Near North Side with "The Loop," is at the junction of the branches of the river, lying directly west of the Wells Street Bridge. It carries four lanes of traffic in the northbound direction, and sidewalks are available on both sides of the bridge.
The Chicago and North Western Railway's Kinzie Street railroad bridge is a single leaf bascule bridge across the north branch of the Chicago River in downtown Chicago, Illinois. At the time of its opening in 1908 it was the world's longest and heaviest bascule bridge. The previous bridges on the same site included a pedestrian span that was the first bridge across the Chicago River; a second bridge that served as Chicago's first railroad bridge; and a third bridge that was one of the first all-steel spans in the United States.
The St. Charles Air Line Bridge is a Strauss Trunnion bascule bridge which spans the Chicago River in Chicago, Illinois.
The Canal Street railroad bridge is a vertical-lift bridge across the south branch of the Chicago River in Chicago, Illinois. It was designated a Chicago Landmark on December 12, 2007.
The Cherry Avenue Bridge is an asymmetric bob-tail swing bridge in Chicago, Illinois that carries the Chicago Terminal Railroad, pedestrians, and cyclists across the North Branch Canal of the Chicago River. It was constructed in 1901–02 by the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway, and it is a rare example of this type of bridge; it was designated a Chicago Landmark on December 12, 2007.
The Wabash Avenue Bridge over the Chicago River was built in 1930. Standing west of the Michigan Avenue Bridge and east of Marina City, the bascule bridge connects the Near North Side with "The Loop" area.
The Outer Drive Bridge, also known as the Link Bridge, is a double-deck bascule bridge carrying Lake Shore Drive across the Chicago River in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Construction was started in 1929 and was completed in 1937 as one of the Public Works Administration's infrastructure projects in Chicago. The bridge is officially named the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial Bridge to honor the centennial anniversary of the birth of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was planned by the Chicago Plan Commission, using Hugh E. Young as the consulting engineer, was designed by the Strauss Engineering Company, built by the American Bridge Company, and erected by Ketler and Elliot Company. It crosses near the mouth of the Chicago River.
The Ottawa Rail Bridge is a railroad bridge spanning the Illinois River in the municipality of Ottawa, LaSalle County, Illinois. The first rail crossing on this site was constructed in 1871 by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, along a route leased from the Ottawa, Oswego and Fox River Valley Railroad between Ottawa and Streator, Illinois. The current bridge was constructed in 1898 by the King Bridge Company and altered in 1932 to include a vertical-lift span designed by Waddell & Harrington. The Illinois Railway now operates trains over the bridge on its Ottawa Branch between Streator and Montgomery, Illinois.
Waddell & Harrington was an American engineering company that designed bridges from 1907 to 1915. It was formed in 1907 as a partnership of John Alexander Low Waddell (1854–1938) and John Lyle Harrington (1868–1942) and was based in Kansas City, Missouri, but had offices in Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, British Columbia. The company designed more than 30 vertical-lift bridges for highways and railroads.
The Alton Bridge was a railroad bridge that carried the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy across the Mississippi River between West Alton, Missouri, and Alton, Illinois. It was located 100 yards (91 m) upriver from, and parallel to, the Old Clark Bridge. The bridge was built between 1892 and 1894 and was removed shortly after the line was abandoned in 1988. With a total length of 2,060 feet (630 m), it consisted of eight through-truss segments—six Pratt trusses, one Pennsylvania truss, and one pivot-swinging truss.
