Historical Bridge

SHAMELESSLY COPIED FROM DAVE'S BLOG - HEY HE DID ALL THE RESEARCH AND WRITING SO WHY NOT! THE PICTURES ARE MINE THOUGH - EXCEPT FOR THE B/W ONE.
Today my Father took us to a very small town telling us that there is a bridge there made from some remains of a 19th Century "Ferris" wheel. When we arrived, just the look of the bridge as different, kind of Gothic. Well they say it should be a goal of every intelligent person to learn something everyday. Today I learned where the name "Ferris Wheel" came from. Here is a little history I would like to share with you:

A little piece of history is rusting away quietly where it has spanned the waters of the Kankakee River for a century. Legend has it that Dunn's Bridge, just north of Tefft, Indiana, is constructed from steel salvaged from one of the late 19th century's most audacious engineering project--the gigantic mechanical wheel designed and constructed by George W. G. Ferris for the 1893 World's Fair. The Galesburg Illinois native (who grew up in Nevada) and civil engineer was 33 years old when he scribbled the design for the world's first large amusement ride on a napkin at a Chicago restaurant. Ferris designed his great wheel in answer to a challenge by Daniel Burnham to create a monument that would rival the Eiffel Tower, a chief exhibit at the Paris exhibition of 1889.
George Ferris' great wheel drew big crowds at the 1893 Chicago fair, and again at the 1904 Louisiana Exposition in St. Louis. But even the hefty fifty cent fare was not enough pay the cost of running this behemoth. It was dynamited on May 11, 1906 and sold for scrap. Shortly thereafter, Ferris' wife left him, saying he was obsessed by his wheel. He died alone and penniless in a hotel room a few days later.

Old-timers in the area of Tefft remember that a local farmer, J.D. Dunn, traveled to Chicago at the close of the fair in 1894 and bought part of the wheel as scrap. Transported to Dunn's property by railroad and horse drawn vehicles, the steel pieces were fashioned into a bridge over the Kankakee, with John Cooper as the blacksmith and Alonzo Hilliand as the carpenter.
The area near the bridge and the present village of Dunn's was a favorite picnic area, with a dance hall, amusement park and several rustic taverns. Some of the picnic crowds reportedly remembered riding in the "monster wheel" in Chicago back in 1893.
Original Ferris Wheel