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The Delaware River at Trenton enters into a long series of sharp downriver rapids called Trenton Falls; and below these rapids the river enters into the deeper and wider tidewater section, on its way to Philadelphia and then the ocean. Trenton was the last stop before the river entered this ocean-going section and as such was, early on, a busy area.
By the mid-1600s there seems to have been a ferry crossing the river at Trenton, one at the base of the Falls, called Lower Ferry. And soon there was a second ferry, located about a mile upriver at the beginning of the downriver Falls and called Upper Ferry. Pennsylvania historian B. F. Fackenthal indicates that the lower ferry was in business first, in the mid-1600s, and that both ferries traveled between what is today called Morrisville, Pennsylvania, and Trenton, New Jersey.
The first ferry owner whose name we know was James Trent, and he was granted, in 1726, both of the New Jersey ferry locations, Lower and Upper. This soon changed, with separate ownership of the Lower ferry. In 1745, Thomas Hooten was operating this ferry and, in 1753, Robert Hooper had taken his place; by 1770, William Richards was operating it.
The very first bridge built across the Delaware River spanned the Lower Level area at Trenton, which had become the busiest ferry crossing on the river. This bridge connected Trenton with the Borough of Morrisville, in Pennsylvania. The large, wooden span was 1,008 feet long, and, although its construction began after the upriver Easton-Phillipsburg Bridge was underway, the Trenton Bridge opened for business first, on January 30, 1806. The Easton span didn't open until November of 1806, but it lived a much longer life than the Lower Trenton structure. And the large Trenton span cost $180,000; by comparison, the Easton Bridge, spanning the narrower river, well upstream, cost only $65,000.
The designer and builder of the Trenton Bridge was Theodore Burr, the foremost American bridge builder of his time. In 1804, he completed a bridge in Waterford, New York, which was the first to span the Hudson River. His skill and experience explain the relatively long and trouble-free life of most of his bridges. The first president of the privately owned bridge company at Trenton was John Beatty, bearer of a name that would make a mark in New Jersey history.
The bridge deck was 31 feet wide, which provided two 11- foot-wide roadways for horse and wagon, as well as two 4-foot walkways, one on each side of the deck, for pedestrians. It was a covered bridge, but as it turned out, a unique one; it had a cedarshingled roof and partially enclosed sides consisting of a wall, 4 feet in height, all along the outside of the bridge to protect wagons and pedestrians. The piers and abutments that supported the bridge were designed to be high enough to avoid all known flood levels, but during construction, the river flooded and threatened the incomplete bridge. Burr promptly decided to raise the piers and abutments a few more feet. This bridge would thus survive all future floods.
During the river's first big flood after the appearance of bridges, in January of 1841, six other, newer bridges over the Delaware were swept away, but the Trenton span stayed high and dry, and undisturbed. The only other bridge to survive this flood was the Palmer Bridge at Easton-Phillipsburg, the second river span to be built. These two bridges that survived this calamity were the river's oldest.
Theodore Burr became famous for his bridge design, but he fell into debt, nevertheless, and when he died in 1822, suddenly and for unknown reasons, his family could not afford funeral expenses. He was buried in an unmarked and now unknown grave.
In 1842, Burr's Trenton structure became the first bridge in the United States to be used for interstate railroad traffic. One of the two horse-and-wagon lanes was laid with track and converted to use only for railroad traffic; the remaining horse-and-wagon lane was subjected to something now called traffic jams. Finally, in 1848, after six years of confusion, the bridge was widened enough to give a separate lane to the trains and return the original train lane to the horse-and-wagon combination. The first impression made by rail traffic on the bridge was good; historians Barber and Howe, in Historical Collections of New Jersey, referred to the bridge as "one of the finest specimens of bridge architecture in the world. It withstood the great flood of 1841 while most other bridges were swept away. It is crossed by the Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad." This last sentence points to the cause of the short life of this fine structure.
Even the early trains were heavy and a strain on the wooden bridge. The first engine in use in the United States, which arrived from England in 1829, weighed 3.5 tons without any freight cars attached and traveled at only about 20 miles an hour; by 1880 a passenger locomotive weighed about 70 tons and traveled at 60 miles an hour. The relatively early demise of the Trenton Bridge was undoubtedly caused by the heavy railroad trains and traffic, for which this wooden bridge was not designed.
The bridge was busy, even overworked, during the next fifteen years, by heavy railroad traffic. Then a fire broke out on the Jersey end of the span, caused by sparks from a locomotive's engine, and the entire bridge was threatened but survived. The bridge company continued the profitable rail traffic, however, but removed the wooden-shingled roof and the other fire-prone wooden enclosures on the bridge deck.
So the bridge worked hard and paid for itself many times over but, by the middle of the century, it was weakened by old age and the hard labor demanded by its unique customer, the railroad. Then, in 1874 the railroad decided to build a set of two tracks separate from this original bridge. They extended the old bridge's piers and abutments on the downriver side and laid new railroad trackage on them. The original bridge went back exclusively to horse- and-wagon customers. But the damage had been done; just a year later, in 1875, the old and obsolete vehicular bridge, worn out by train traffic, was torn down and a new iron bridge was erected nearby in its place. The original Delaware River bridge, built in 1806, was no more. The nonrailroad Easton-Phillipsburg Bridge, built the same year as the Trenton Bridge, would last another quarter of a century.
This iron bridge built in Trenton and opened for business in 1876 was for vehicular traffic only. The new structure was designed by Joseph Wilson and built by the Keystone Bridge Company of Pittsburgh. Bridge owners had learned a lesson; this bridge would remain a vehicular span.
The railroad, in 1892, constructed a new steel bridge for itself crossing the Delaware in this Lower Trenton area. It contained four sets of tracks. And in 1898 the railroad span built in 1874 on the old bridge was torn down and replaced by another new steel fourtrack railroad bridge at the same location. Both of these new railroad bridges were constructed by the American Bridge Company. Finally, in 1908, the Pennsylvania Railroad built a new and beautiful stone arch railroad bridge just downriver of its older bridges. The company then took down the bridges built in 1892 and 1898 and shipped these nearly new structures to Washington, D.C., where they would carry traffic over the Potomac River to the nation's capital.
The iron bridge built in 1876 was used for foot and carriage traffic and then auto traffic, as well. And it remained a profitable and relatively trouble-free toll bridge. Then, on July 12, 1918- World War I was underway and bridges were militarily vital-this bridge was taken over by the Joint Commission for Eliminating Toll Bridges at a rather attractive price of $240,000. The bridge's tolls were eliminated at once. The bridge was older and overworked, with the coming of motor vehicles and heavily loaded trucks; it became increasingly unsuitable for modern vehicular traffic. Finally, in 1928 this toll-free bridge was torn down and a new, more sturdy and up-to-date bridge was constructed. Only the original piers and abutments could be reused. The bridge's approaches were reconstructed at the same time. The total cost for all this work was $650,000.
The Lower Trenton Bridge has led a productive and peaceful life since that time, devoid of flood damage and owner shenanigans. Its ancestor bridge was the first one over the Delaware and from it, future bridge owners and governmental agencies learned many lessons. And so did the railroads. This provided the blueprint and rulebook for future river spans.