The Stone Arch Bridge
Near Minneapolis St Paul, Minnesota
The Stone Arch Bridge crossing the Mississippi at Minneapolis was built in eighteen eighty-three for the Great Northern Railway, under the direction of railroad magnate James J. Hill. It is the only arched stone bridge on the Mississippi River.
Hill needed the bridge to connect his rail network across the river at a point just downstream from St. Anthony Falls, where the gorge narrowed and the limestone walls of the riverbank could anchor the structure. The bridge spans two thousand one hundred feet and curves slightly to follow the river's contour. It was built from locally quarried limestone and granite, and the twenty-one stone arches that carry the deck are still the original masonry, with one steel truss span.
The bridge carried rail traffic until the late nineteen seventies, when the railroad stopped using it. It sat idle for a decade. In the nineteen nineties, the city of Minneapolis converted it to a pedestrian and bicycle bridge. From its deck you can look directly upstream at the face of St. Anthony Falls, the limestone walls of the gorge, and the ruins of the Washburn A Mill on the west bank.
The bridge is a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, designated by the American Society of Civil Engineers. James J. Hill built much of the northern rail corridor that shaped how goods and people moved across the upper Midwest for a century. The bridge is the most visible remnant of his infrastructure in the Twin Cities.
