How Workers Built the Letchworth Viaduct as the Highest Railroad Bridge East of the Mississippi
In May of 1875, the highest wooden railroad bridge in the United States burned to the ground in a single morning. The Erie Railroad had 100 days to replace it — or lose its main line to Chicago permanently. This is the story of how they did it. The Portage Bridge at the Genesee River Gorge in western New York was first built in 1852 by Irish immigrant workers earning one dollar a day, 234 feet above a river with no safety equipment and no record kept of those who fell. When fire destroyed it in 1875, a new workforce — Irish laborers, Scottish ironworkers, German masons — descended into the same gorge to build an iron replacement in 100 days using portable forges, hand-driven rivets, and timber falsework over a live river. Every rivet in that bridge was thrown from one man to another, caught in a metal cup, positioned by hand, and driven by hammer. At two hundred feet above the Genesee River. With no net below them. The engineers who designed the bridge are named in the historical record. The men who built it are listed in payroll ledgers under first names only — and sometimes not even that. The iron Portage Bridge is still standing today inside Letchworth State Park, still carrying freight trains, the rivet heads smooth and cold and permanent. This channel exists for the men who drove them. If this kind of history matters to you, subscribe and hit the bell — every video on this channel is about the workers the official record forgot to keep. #ForgottenLabor #RailroadHistory #LaborHistory #AmericanHistory #PortageBridge #LETCHWORTHStatePark #ErieRailroad #IronBridge #WorkingClassHistory #IndustrialHistory #BridgeEngineering #IrishImmigrants #19thCentury #HiddenHistory #GeneseRiverGorge
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