A bridge collapse 150 years ago in Dixon, Illinois, remains the worst vehicular-bridge disaster in American history. The collapse claimed 46 lives and injured another 56.
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This photo provided by Lee County Historical and Genealogical Society shows the Truesdell Bridge in Dixon, Ill., in 1873. It's been 150 years since the bridge collapsed, remaining the worst road-bridge disaster in American history. On May 4, 1873, a crowd of more than 200 gathered on the bridge to watch a baptism when it toppled over, trapping dozens of victims just inches below the river's surface. The disaster claimed 46 lives and injured dozens of others.
DIXON, Ill. — Gertie Wadsworth was in the arms of her grandmother that bright day when sunshine dissolved distasteful memories of a long, brutal winter. Christan Goble held the 3 1/2-year-old girl in a crowd of more than 200 on the bridge over the Rock River. After a procession down Galena Avenue from the Baptist Church on May 4, 1873, the Rev. J.H. Pratt began baptizing parishioners in the brisk, rapid current.
Then, with a sharp crack and a crescendo of shrieking spectators loaded on the pedestrian walkway in front of towering trusses, the 4-year-old bridge twisted, splintered and rolled over. Forty-six people perished, many immured by the unrelenting gridiron just below the water’s surface. Along with 56 injuries, the Truesdell bridge tragedy, 150 years ago Thursday, remains the worst vehicular-bridge disaster in American history.
“It’s not as though the bridge just collapsed and went straight down,” says Tom Wadsworth, 70, a retired magazine editor and expert on the calamity. “It turns over on top of these people. ... As the Tribune said, the truss ‘fell over with the weight and imprisoned the doomed in an iron cage with which they sunk and from which there was no escape.’”
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