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Sample Minnesota's rich history, courtesy of a microfilm archive of newspaper articles, photos and ads dating back more than 140 years. Fresh items are posted once or twice a week. Go here for tips on how to track down old newspaper articles on your own. Or visit the Yesterday's News archives, a searchable library of more than 300 articles.

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Posts about Transportation

Oct. 20, 1899: How to move 120 tons of bridge

Posted by: Ben Welter Updated: October 25, 2012 - 3:38 PM

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Over the past 150 years, five bridges have spanned the Mississippi at Wabasha Street in St. Paul. The first, a wooden Howe truss span known as the St. Paul Bridge, was completed in 1859. The second, built in 1872, was of the same design. The third was built in about 1884. That bridge was, according to a rather dated page on St. Paul’s website, an all-iron Pratt truss, “an innovative version known as a Whipple double-intersection Pratt.” Innovative, perhaps, but not enduring: Five years later it was replaced by an iron cantilever deck-truss that served the city for a century before the high cost of maintenance and repair spelled its doom. The current Wabasha Street Bridge, a concrete segmental box girder bridge, was completed in 1998.

The 1889 bridge was built in two parts, first the north section and, 10 years later, the south section. The latter project required that a 120-ton span of wood and iron be moved 50 feet, from temporary wooden piers built downstream to permanent masonry piers. In the story below, the Minneapolis Tribune explained how six men, without the aid of horses or steam power, completed the job in just eight hours. The feat was described in detail in the January 1900 issue of the Journal of the Association of Engineering Societies.

Bridge Moving

by Modern Methods

Six men moved the 120 tons of wood and iron contained in one span of the Wabasha street bridge, St. Paul, 50 feet Wednesday, and they didn’t make much fuss about it as an expressman would in getting a trunk upstairs. The men were not unusually tired after their feat, for screws and compound levers accomplished what their hands could never have done and completed a task in which it would have been dangerous to have used machinery.

By the aid of screws and rollers the men pulled the bridge the entire distance in eight hours. The lifting and trussing of the bridge requiring a week or more, and it will take almost that long for each of the other two spans that will have to be moved. After all this is done the approaches will have to be shaped up and the connection made with the permanent portion of the bridge.

An attempt was made at first to move the bridge without the use of rollers, but it was found the friction was too great and that it could not be done. The rollers are simply iron bars cut in short sections, and as fast as they roll out from under the plate they are placed in front again. A screw mechanism is employed at each end of the span. In moving the bridge it is necessary to exercise the greatest care to avoid demolishing the old piers.

The contract for moving the old bridge amounts to $7,500 and for building the approach $40,995.

A photo from the January 1900 issue of the Journal of the Association of Engineering Societies - thanks, Google Books -- shows a 120-ton section of St. Paul's Wabasha Street bridge being maneuvered into place.

The fourth Wabasha Street bridge, shown here in about 1900, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. (Photo courtesy of Minnesota Historical Society)

Sept. 20, 1941: New locomotive gets a taste of Minnehaha Falls

Posted by: Ben Welter Updated: May 29, 2011 - 11:34 PM

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Seventy-six years ago this week, the Milwaukee Road introduced high-speed rail service between Minneapolis and Chicago. The Hiawatha line used steam locomotives at first, transitioning to diesels in the 1940s. The trip took as little as seven hours, with speeds topping 100 mph. Below are a few photos of the Hiawatha, which made its last run in 1971.

The Star Journal’s caption didn’t offer much detail on this photo, aside from Miss Lowell’s home address, 1808 Emerson Av. S. Fortunately, the Milwaukee Road’s official magazine used the image on the cover of its October 1941 issue and treated readers to this wonderfully detailed caption:

Just prior to the departure of the new 4,000 h.p. Diesel electric Hiawatha locomotive from Minneapolis on train No. 6 Sept. 20, the locomotive was christened by Miss Janet Lowell, the only feminine member of the Twin City chapter of the Diesel Locomotive Fans Association. Arrangements for the christening were made by A.F. Dredge Jr. of Minneapolis, president of the chapter; the entire membership was in attendance. Used in the christening ceremony was a bottle of water taken from nearby Minnehaha Falls where, according to Longfellow, Hiawatha wooed and won his Laughing Water. To make certain that the Diesel fan who fetched the water actually got it from the Minnehaha Falls and not from the hydrant in his own back yard, the very exacting Diesel Locomotive Fans Association required him to sign an affidavit indicating that he went, dipped, and returned.

Shown at the ceremony are, left to right: Miss Lowell; D.T. Bagnell, superintendent of the LaCrosse & River Division; and E.F. Conway, captain of police, Minneapolis; the men at the right of the picture are, left to right: Carl Frank, electrician; M.S. Huber, locomotive engineer; and William Sukau, maintainer for the Electro-Motive Corporation.

Interior of a Hiawatha dining car in about 1935. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)

A fireman at the controls of a Hiawatha steam locomotive in about 1936. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)

A Hiawatha lounge-observation car at the Milwaukee Road Depot, Minneapolis, 1948. (Star Journal photo)

Interior of the lounge car, complete with fresh-cut flowers. (Star Journal photo)

March 23, 1921: Evolution 'awfully hard' on a man's figure

Posted by: Ben Welter Updated: March 24, 2012 - 5:14 PM

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A “Detroit scientist” shared his bizarre theories on the front page of the Minneapolis Tribune:

First 24 Million Years
Going to Be Awfully
Hard on Man’s Figure

After That He’ll Be 132 Inches
Tall, Have Legs Like Pipe
Stems, Says Scientist.

Universal News Service

Detroit, March 22. – Man is growing so big that in time he will have to get off the earth.

He will be in the same class with the dinosaurs and the mammoth white elephant and other prehistoric elephants.

So maintains Levi S. Gardner, Detroit scientist, inventor of the ball-bearing typewriter, the electric gun and student of evolution.

“Men will be 132 inches tall in 24,000,000 years and in a few more million he’ll be too large to live on the earth; there won’t be enough food to sustain him,” Gardner said today.

He says future man will have a spine resembling a circus pole in length.

“The automobile is lengthening men’s spines,” Gardner stated, “and it is shortening his legs. If people ride around in autos for a few million years their legs will be about the size of pipe-stems and won’t be strong enough to support the rest of the body, which will grow larger as the legs grow shorter. Men of the future will have broader shoulders and bigger heads.”

Gardner maintains that it is the jouncing of the automobile which so affects the spine. Auto manufacturers here threaten to sue him for libeling the auto industry.

Prohibition and other efforts to take temptation away from the people, if persisted in, means that the race will be eliminated before its time, according to Gardner.

Paul C. Buetow, the proud owner of a new Ford, seemed happy enough in this 1921 photo. If only he knew what a few years behind the wheel would do to his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)

June 17, 1890: 'Violently insane' from overwork

Posted by: Ben Welter Updated: June 15, 2010 - 9:59 PM

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From the Minneapolis Tribune:

INSANE FROM OVERWORK

MILWAUKEE, June 16. – [Special.] – Ernest Vliet, general passenger agent of the Milwaukee, Lake Shore & Western road, one of the best known passenger agents in the Northwest, became violently insane today. It took the efforts of strong men to convey him to the private asylum at Wauwatosa. His aberration of mind was brought on by overwork.

Ernest Vliet was most likely treated at the Milwaukee Sanitarium in Wauwatosa, shown here in an ad from about 1929.

June 17, 1890: 'Violently insane' from overwork

Posted by: Ben Welter Updated: June 15, 2010 - 9:59 PM

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From the Minneapolis Tribune:

INSANE FROM OVERWORK

Ernest Vliet was most likely treated at the Milwaukee Sanitarium in Wauwatosa, shown here in an ad from about 1929.

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