BEALE’S WAGON ROAD. TO THE PACIFIC COAST. WESTERN CAMEL ROAD AND EASTERN IRON BRIDGE ROAD
Abstract
Early on the morning of February 22, 1861, the President-elect of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, left the largest hotel in the United States, the Continental Hotel in downtown Philadelphia, and rode in a private carriage past the headquarters offices of the powerful industrial and political leaders of Philadelphia to give a rousing nationally-focused speech at Independence Hall. Photographs of this event (see Library of Congress photo below) are still historically relevant. So powerful was Philadelphia at that moment that the owner of Philadelphia’s The Press would soon start a newspaper in Washington City that by 1862 would become “The Voice” of the forthcoming Republican Lincoln Administration.
Philadelphia was already known for its industrial leadership, iron works, railroad companies, the largest steam-powered locomotive builder—Baldwin Locomotive Works, and now in the forefront of national politics— including the Northern Democrat and Republican parties. To be sure, those industrialists that had recently built advanced technology iron bridges for the federal government for a nationally relevant transportation project would be telling the nation and President-elect Lincoln about their recent feats of accomplishment. One such company was A. & P. Roberts and Company of Philadelphia, supported by their privately owned Pencoyd Iron Works, also of Philadelphia. They had just completed building six iron bridges out on the Plains for the U. S. Army in support of the national effort to build the first high-tech wagon road from Fort Smith, Arkansas, to the Pacific (and the bountiful gold fields of California). Philadelphians dreamed their next step would be building a transcontinental railroad to California for the government, using Philadelphia’s iron rails, iron bridges, steam locomotives, and railroad companies.
Until April 12, 1861, Lt. E. F. Beale’s six new iron bridges, built in Philadelphia and now being heavily used along the newly completed Beale Wagon Road in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), were the Toast of the Nation. The Butterfield Overland Stage was even using Beale’s largest iron bridge across the Poteau River. Advanced stereoscopic views of Pencoyd’s iron bridges led to the commercial advertising parade from Philadelphia to national audiences and railroad executives. Beale’s iron bridges played a role in this ticker-tape parade! Not a desert camel was to be seen! Moreover, the Army hated the African camels Beale had first brought out West in 1857; whereas, the Army loved Beale’s iron bridges that could be easily constructed in the West, but could not be easily burned by Indians. Surely larger business opportunities were coming soon to Philadelphia—the proud builders of Beale’s Iron Bridge Road. Their overall success makes for an All-American story about the people, city, and country that built it in Indian Territory in 1859.
Department
Civil EngineeringCollections
Citation
Messer, Carroll (2021). BEALE’S WAGON ROAD. TO THE PACIFIC COAST. WESTERN CAMEL ROAD AND EASTERN IRON BRIDGE ROAD. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /194898.