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Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River is the home of the oldest existing wire suspension bridge in the United States — the Delaware Aqueduct, or Roebling Bridge as it is now known. Begun in 1847 as one of four suspension aqueducts on the Delaware and Hudson Canal, it was designed by and built under the supervision of John A. Roebling, future engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Portions of the D & H Canal, including the Delaware Aqueduct, were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1968. The Delaware Aqueduct is also designated a National Civil Engineering Landmark.

...A German immigrant, and graduate of the Royal Polytechnic School of Berlin, Roebling came to the United States in 1831. It was not until 1845 that he built his first suspension structure. From 1845 until his death in 1869, he designed five major suspension bridges. Two — the Cincinnati-Covington Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge — are still standing.

On June 12, 1806, John A. Roebling, civil engineer and designer of the Brooklyn Bridge, was born in Muehlhausen, Prussia. The Brooklyn Bridge, Roebling's greatest achievement, spans the East River to connect Manhattan with Brooklyn. For nearly a decade after its completion, the bridge, with a main span of 1595 feet, was the longest suspension bridge in the world. Steel wire cable, invented and manufactured by Roebling, made the structure possible.

When the Brooklyn Bridge was opened you had to pay three cents to cross it until it was paid for. When they opened the bridge everybody went to see it..It took them 14 years to build the Brooklyn bridge.

An engineer by training, Eiffel founded and developed a company specializing in metal structural work, whose crowning achievement was the Eiffel Tower. He devoted the last thirty years of his life to his experimental research.

Born in Dijon in 1832, he graduated from the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in 1855, the same year that Paris hosted the first world's Fair. He spent several years in the South West of France, where he supervized work on the great railway bridge in Bordeaux, and afterwards he set up in his own right in 1864 as a "constructor", that is, as a business specializing in metal structural work. His outstanding career as a constructor was marked by work on the Porto viaduct over the river Douro in 1876, the Garabit viaduct in 1884, Pest railway station in Hungary, the dome of the Nice observatory, and the ingenious structure of the Statue of Liberty. It culminated in 1889 with the Eiffel Tower.

Today, we meet the father and son who built the Brooklyn Bridge. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.

For me, the story of John Roebling begins in Kentucky, not far from where I used to live. On Sunday afternoons my wife and I would take our kids to see Old High Bridge over the Kentucky River. A plaque credits John Roebling with having started this old bridge in 1853. Actually, the bridge there today has been entirely reconceived. Still, the glorious spider web of steel emerging out of the quiet hilly isolation around it powerfully evokes Roebling's sense of design.

Below are Newspaper articles, pictures, stories, commendations, or anything related to the Rivers the 150th Bridged to cross.

From the shores of Maine to "Frisco"--
Fighting Engineers are we!
We build our Countries bridges,
To make way for victory.
First to Fight for Rights and freedom,
and to keep the pathways clear,
we are proud to claim the title of
"Combat Engineers"

Where-ever we are needed
to build or repair,
you can bet that you will always find
The "150th" there.

Some of Oregon's most noteworthy public works projects first saw life on the drawing tables of Frank G. Hutchinson and Harold L. Spooner. Other drawings by the two men were destined to remain dreams. The works shown here represent a small portion of the 110 drawings they produced from 1935 to 1957.

This rare cast-and wrought iron bridge was built in 1872. The bridge was located in Coshocton County, Ohio, crossing Wills Creek on Linton Township Road 144.

It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a rare example of early engineering design by one of the most famous engineers of his time, Squire Whipple. This bridge was designed and patented by him in 1841. He had designed other bridges but this was the most popular. The State of New York accepted this as their official design and it was used extensively on the Erie Canal. his design was illegally copied by many other bridge builders, depriving him of much deserved royalties. In 1847 Squire Whipple wrote his book on the design of bridges using scientific methods. This is the first time a book of this type had been written. It has been revised several times and copies can still be found in some libraries. His methods and formulas are still useful. He was considered one of the top engineers of the 19th Century and was the first honorary member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

When the retreating French Army and its allies reached the banks of the ice-filled Berezina River on the 23rd of November, 1812, they discovered their sole means of escape blocked by the smoldering ruins of the Borisov bridge. On the opposite bank lay a Russian force under Admiral Pavel Vasil'evich Chichagov, sent there specifically to cut off the French retreat from Russia. But with ingenuity born of desperation, French Engineer Jean-Baptiste Éblé and four hundred pontonniers managed to quietly build two new bridges using materials taken from nearby houses. Only days before this the French Army's Commander-in-Chief, Napoleon Bonaparte, had ordered all sixty boats of the army bridging train to be burned along with all other "nonessential" gear. General Éblé protested the decision at the time and discretely ordered two wagons of charcoal and six wagons of tools to be spared. He also assigned each of his men to carry a tool and some cramp irons. The Berezina bridges would be built using only these hand-tools, during the winter, for an army on the verge of disintegration.

The first covered bridge in America crossed the Schuylkill at High Street, now Market Street -- a familiar enough spot to generations of Drexel and Penn students and faculty! It replaced a pontoon bridge, and for that reason it was called The Permanent Bridge. It was not originally planned as a wooden or covered bridge, but rather as a stone bridge. The abutments and piers had been begun in 1800 and were complete in 1804, when the decision was made to complete the Permanent Bridge as a wooden bridge. For this purpose, Thomas Palmer, a bridge architect, was brought from New England. Palmer's bridge was braced with three arches and multiple kingposts. The suggestion that it be covered came from Judge Richard Peters, president of the Permanent Bridge Company. Palmer supported it, expecting the bridge to last thirty, and perhaps even forty years, if covered. Owen Biddle, a Philadelphia architect and builder, did the woodwork and ornamentation that were to make the bridge a memorable Philadelphia landmark.

The Berlin Iron Bridge Company was Connecticut's only large-scale fabricator of metal-truss bridges in the 19th century. Some 400 employees worked at its East Berlin plant, and hundreds of others worked in the field erecting the bridges. Over 1,000 Berlin bridges are believed to have been built before 1900. Most were in the Northeast, but even today Berlin bridges survive as far away as Texas. The company mostly built small-town highway bridges using its patented lenticular or parabolic truss. However, the Berlin Iron Bridge Company was prepared to take on any kind of fabrication work, including multiple-span city bridges, suspension bridges, drawbridges, and railroad bridges.

Hundreds of Berlin bridges were built in the company's home state of Connecticut. As of this date (August, 2001) only 13 highway bridges, 2 railroad bridges, and 2 millyard bridges are known to have survived.