James Buchanan Eads
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| James Buchanan Eads | |
 James Buchanan Eads
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| Born | May 23, 1820 Lawrenceburg, Indiana |
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| Died | March 8, 1887 Nassau, Bahamas |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | structural engineer |
James Buchanan Eads (May 23, 1820 – March 8, 1887) was an American structural engineer and inventor.
Eads was born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, and named for his Mother's cousin, then Congressman and subsequent President of the United States James Buchanan. His early life was spent growing up in St. Louis, Missouri.
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[edit] Fortune
Eads made his initial fortune in salvage, by creating a diving bell for retrieving goods from the bottom of rivers that were sunk there by riverboat disasters, especially along the busy Mississippi River. He also devised special boats for raising the remains of sunken ships from the river bed.
[edit] Civil War
In 1861, after the outbreak of the American Civil War he was contracted to construct the City class ironclads for the United States Navy, and produced seven such ships within five months.[1] He continued to produce ironclad steamships throughout the war, which greatly aided the Union.
[edit] Bridge
Eads designed and built the first road and rail bridge to cross the Mississippi River, the famous Eads Bridge at St. Louis, Missouri, constructed from 1867 through 1874. After destruction by a tornado in 1871, it was designed to be tornado proof and was famously struck again by a tornado in 1896, this time surviving. Eads' bridge was the first bridge to use the cantilever construction method. This allowed steam boat traffic to continue using the river during construction. The bridge also was the first to be made of steel alloy.
[edit] Mississippi River designs
The Mississippi in the 100-mile-plus stretch between the port of New Orleans, Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico frequently suffered from silting up of its outlets, stranding ships or making parts of the river unnavigable for a period of time. Eads solved the problem with a wooden jetty system that narrowed the main outlet of the river, causing the river to speed up and cut its channel deeper, allowing year-round navigation. Had a similar system been used throughout the entire Mississippi Valley, the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the Great Flood of 1993 and Hurricane Katrina Disaster in 2005 might have been reduced.[citation needed] However, top officials of the Army Corps of Engineers lobbied Congress for levees and flood walls of their own design, which exacerbated these disasters, and against Eads' jetty system, which would have reduced these disasters.
[edit] Other work
He designed a gigantic railway system intended for construction at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, which would carry ocean going ships across the isthmus from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean; this attracted some interest but was never constructed.
In 1884 he became the first US citizen awarded the Albert Medal of the Society of the Arts.
Eads died in Nassau, Bahamas on March 8, 1887, aged 66. He was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri.
[edit] Legacies
Port Eads, Louisiana is named for him.
US Route 50 through Lawrenceburg, his hometown, is called Eads Parkway in his honor.
He has his own star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.
[edit] External links
- Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America by John M. Barry, ISBN 0-684-84002-2
- James Buchanan Eads information at Structurae
- PBS - Secrets of a Master Builder
- National Park Service, Vicksburg National Military Park website on City class ironclads
