Talk:John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge

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An interesting story involving "recycling" of material here. In the 1830's prior to the growth of railroads, canal building was a major effort to get goods to markets in England and here in the eastern United States. A consortium was formed in Kentucky in this period with the goal of making the Licking river (the third longest north flowing river in the world - a grand 75 miles or therabouts) and turn it into a canal, so goods could be moved from deep into Kentucky to the Ohio River for distribution to Cincinnati or even further up and down the Ohio River. At that time, the point that the Licking entered the Ohio was actually a small waterfall(about 8-10 feet to the normal level of the Ohio which varied greatly as this as before the Markland dam created its more or less current day pool of about 28 feet at Cincinnati) where it fell into the Ohio river, so a channel was blasted out and seven dams with locks were orginally projected to let canal boats come from Falmouth Kentucky up to the Ohio. Three of dam were comepleted, one of which was fitted with gates for the locks, Four others were in various stages of completion when an economic bust hit in 1836. The consortium was out of money. The one dam fitted with gates was left with gates wide open and the entire project was abandoned.

The stone in the immediate area is not suitable for heavy construction. So all the stone that was used to build the dams was brought down river from West Virginia. 30 years later, When Shinkle and company began building the bridge towers, it made sense to use the abandonded dams as a source for stone at least for the interior portions of the towers and shoreside footings, so the dams were dismantled and the stone "recycled"

[edit] Add to main article

That's interesting. Do you have citations? Why not put it in the main article page? --Tysto 06:29, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)

[edit] Ohio River vehicular bridges in Cincinnati

Hi all, this section is redundant with the article List of crossings of the Ohio River. I propose removing this section (also from the other two articles that have it) and replacing it with a see also section pointing to the list of Ohio crossings. The recent addition of the crossings navbox gives the ability to navigate locally, using a standard scheme which is used extensively for other bridges in the area. Let me know what you think. Robshill 18:20, 20 April 2006 (UTC)