Built St. Louis The Industrial City Upper North Riverfront North city, St. Louis The riverfront bike trail atop the levee reveals a whole world of industry and hidden corners of the city.

McKinley Bridge The McKinley Bridge long carried both rail and auto traffic across the river, in a tight relationship that grew increasingly precarious as car size and speed increased. The strange design places auto traffic outside the main trusses on "outriggers". Additional auto traffic could travel on lanes inside the trusses -- lanes that were shared with the railroad tracks! The toll bridge deposited traffic in the village of Venice, Illinois; its approaches carried travellers through the air past the imposing Venice Power Plant. The bridge was engineered by Ralph Modjeski, a prolific bridge designer, and opened in 1910. Rail traffic was removed from the bridge some years ago, and the various approaches abandoned. Several of them are visible throughout the area, such as the west approach ramp, a small surviving fragment of the eastern approach ramp, and the now-demolished eastern approach trestle, which had long stood rotting and partially collapsed amid farm fields. By the 1990s, the roadway was sufficiently deteriorated that crossing the bridge could be a harrowing experience. The bridge was closed in 2001. After standing idle for several years, is now being conditioned for auto and pedestrian traffic once again.
Merchants Bridge The Merchants Bridge is a railroad-only bridge, constructed from 1889-1890 and still in heavy use today. It is very similar in design and scale to the McKinley Bridge downstream.
More misc. industrial lies beneath the approaches to the Merchants Bridge. Photo Notes: 1 - The smokestack of the local incinerator, spewing a foul-looking yellow haze. 2 - The southern tip of Gabaret Island, where the two-mile Chain of Rocks canal rejoins the Mississippi after bypassing an unnavigable section of the river.	1     2
Riverfront trail north The St. Louis Riverfront Trail is an amazing paved bike path that mostly runs atop the levees that keep the Mississippi River out of the industrial lowland of north St. Louis. It runs past transfer points, junk yards, ruins, and numerous active industries. The operation shown here, for example, is a coal transfer point. Coal trains arrive from coalfields (likely in central Illinois), back into the building shown here one car at a time, and are unloaded. The coal is transfered by the massive bucket wheel excavator shown here (also seen on the Hall Street tour.) Another oddity is a tiny group of houses sitting on the river side of the levee. Quite obviously sitting on ground that regularly floods, they are mounted on barges; one is anchored to a pair of poles on each end. When the waters rise... the houses rise with them. I cannot imagine how their water and sewer lines are conncted. A third adjacent house sits atop a small rise, though its roof is still lower than the top of the levee. If the river rose high enough it would be at the water's mercy. Home || Next Site > > >