The Morgan Line’s steam engine No. 2 was greeted by “a multitude of cheering citizens and whistling of engines and steamboats” when it became the first “iron horse” to puff its way across Berwick Bay on Saturday, Feb. 4, 1882.
The last spike of the first bridge between Morgan City and Berwick was hammered into place at 4 p.m. and a crowd of dignitaries almost immediately climbed aboard the waiting locomotive to make that first trip.
The “veteran engineer” William Powell was at the controls. Packed into the engine with him were Morgan railroad superintendent George Paudelly and his assistant, the bridge builder J. W. Putnam and civil engineer Julius Krattschnitt, Morgan steamship and railroad agent Randolph Natill, and the bridge superintendent, identified by the New Orleans Times-Democrat only as Mr. Moore.
After a brief ceremony on the Berwick side, the engine crossed back to Morgan City to be greeted by “more cheers and waving of hats” and music from the Morgan City band, which “did their level best to make the greeting more complete.”
The event was worthy of the celebration. The New Orleans, Opelousas, and Great Western Railroad had reached from Algiers, across the river from New Orleans, to Brashear City, as Morgan City was then known, in 1857, but that remained the end of the line until 1878, when steamship tycoon Charles Morgan bought the remains of the railroad that had been unable to recover from abuse during the Civil War.
That year, Morgan’s Louisiana and Texas Railroad and Steamship Company announced its intent to extend the rails north to Vermilionville (Lafayette), where it would connect with the Louisiana Western Railroad, which planned to lay track from Vermilionville to the Sabine River and tie in there to the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, which ran from the Sabine to Houston.
That plan came together on Aug. 30, 1880, when the first through train ran from Houston to New Orleans. Bridges crossed all of the rivers and bayous between the two cities except at Berwick Bay. The railroad cars, or their passengers and freight, had to be ferried across the bay, with much delay and hassle, until the completion of this first bridge.
There was a bit of faith involved when engineer Powell and his cab-load of bigwigs took that first trip across the span. The bridge apparently had not been fully tested. It was only after they’d made their inaugural trip that three engines were coupled together and “passed over and back, resting for a while on one of the spans.”
The 1,657-foot bridge had nine spans altogether, each of them 158 feet long, with a 200-foot drawbridge in the center. The superstructure was “entirely of iron,” supported by 24 creosoted piles driven “from 35 feet to 40 feet below hard bottom.”
The test by the three engines was “in every way satisfactory,” according to the Times-Democrat account, “no wavering, springing or swaying.” The “greatest deflection,” according to the newspaper was only three-fourths of an inch in the center of each span.
With that satisfactory test, two coaches were “placed at the disposal of visitors” and crossed over and back.
That bridge served until about 1915, when it was changed from a draw bridge to a swing-span. The first automobile bridge, the Long-Allen bridge, wasn’t completed for another 50 years, in July 1933.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, Cajuns and Other Characters, is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.
