The Rock Island Bridge in Kansas City, Kansas is a rail crossing of the Kansas River. It connects the Armourdale, Kansas to West Bottoms. It is a truss bridge that is closed to traffic.
It was built in 1905. It has two main spans and a smaller one on the east side. It also has a screw-jack lifting system to allow the bridge to be lifted during floods. It was used until 1972, when the Kansas City Stockyards closed down, the Kemper Arena was built right in the path of the tracks, and Rock Island abandoned the line to the bridge later that year. The bridge's rails were cut off at each end and a levee for the Kansas River was built at the east end. It no longer carries railroads, but carries electrical wires in a rack. It is located just north of Kansas Avenue over the Kansas River.
Famous quotes containing the words rock, island and/or bridge:
“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church...”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 16:18.
“I should like to have seen a gallery of coronation beauties, at Westminster Abbey, confronted for a moment by this band of Island girls; their stiffness, formality, and affectation contrasted with the artless vivacity and unconcealed natural graces of these savage maidens. It would be the Venus de’ Medici placed beside a milliner’s doll.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O, my soul.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)