Civil War’s longest pontoon bridge
was constructed at Paducah in 1861

Union Major Gen. John C. Fremont telegraphed Federal commander U.S. Grant as the barges began to arrive at Cairo, Ill., on Sept. 20, 1861.

“The pontoon bridge will reach Paducah tomorrow or Sunday from Cincinnati,” Fremont transmitted. “It can be put in in a few hours. Infantry and artillery will be needed for its protection.”

The barges would provide a floating support for the longest pontoon bridge built during the Civil War. Extending some 4,000 feet with the longest span being 2,300 feet, the bridge would enable the Union Army to occupy Paducah and provide support for the defense of the lower Ohio Valley.

The bridge dwarfed a similar structure constructed over the James River in Virginia that was approximately 2,200 feet in length.

“The pontoon bridge originated at Brookport, Ill., east of Metropolis, and extended to a small island in the Ohio River that no longer is in existence,” Bill Baxter, administrator of Paducah’s Tilghman Museum, explained. “It then extended from the island near to Fort Anderson, which originally was a Union supply depot.”

The fort was located near the western portion of Fourth Street and was replaced by the Executive Inn, which now has been removed. Fort Anderson, equipped as a seven-gun facility early in the war, was the site of the Battle of Paducah in March 1864.

Harper’s Weekly, a prominent newspaper during the Civil War, reported on the bridge in its Oct. 26, 1861 edition. According to its correspondent, a Mr. Beard, the bridge “surpasses anything of the kind before attempted in the United States.”

“It is spanned by a hundred coal barges, strongly braced together, twelve feet apart, connected by trestle-work, and planked over,” Beard reported. “The planking is twenty feet wide. The bridge is constructed to carry the heaviest ordnance, at a point half a mile below the town.”

Beard also noted that a fleet of 13 steamers brought materials for the bridge down river from Louisville.