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 Great Northern Stone Arch Bridge - Minneapolis, MN
N 44° 58.850 W 093° 15.524
15T E 479601 N 4980853
The Great Northern Stone Arch Bridge, once referred to as "Jim Hill's Folly," crosses the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Waymark Code: WMKE5V
Location: Minnesota, United States
Date Posted: 03/29/2014
Views: 10
The GREAT NORTHERN STONE ARCH BRIDGE, downstream below the 3rd Ave. bridge, curves across the river just below St. Anthony Falls. This, the second railroad bridge to span the Mississippi, suggests a Roman viaduct. Its twenty-three arches of limestone and granite, each locked with a keystone, support a double-track roadbed over which transcontinental trains rumble daily into the Great Northern Station, a few hundred yards upstream. "Hill's Folly" many called it, when he planned and supervised the bridge's erection in 1881, but it is now known simply as the Stone Arch Bridge. ---Minnesota: A State Guide, 1938
The bridge was constructed of more than 100,000 tons of stone, including granite from Sauk Rapids, Minnesota; marble from Bridgeport, Wisconsin; magnesium limestone from Mankato, Minnesota, and Stone City, Iowa; and limestone quarried on site. Although the bridge originally had 23 arches, two of them were removed in 1962 so that a steel truss bridge could be inserted to allow commercial barges to pass. The bridge was last used for train passage in 1978. It has since been converted into a pedestrian bridge.
Book: Minnesota
Page Number(s) of Excerpt: 187
Year Originally Published: 1938
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