History
The first attempt at transportation across the river was a cable-operated scow type of ferry that began operating in 1786. Two rowboats were often available for use as well. In 1826 the Cataraqui Bridge Company was formed to build a wooden bridge "1800 feet long by 25 feet wide and built on stone piers". The Cataraqui Bridge was opened in 1829. Tolls were collected from a toll booth on the west end of the bridge, and since pedestrians were charged a penny, the bridge was popularly known as the "Penny Bridge". A draw bridge allowed larger vessels to pass through. The draw bridge was eventually replaced by an easier-to-operate swing bridge. In 1917, the Penny Bridge was replaced by the causeway which included three bridges: two bridges at each end of the causeway, and the center lift bridge. Of these, only the original center lift bridge remains; the steel bridges at the east and west ends of the causeway were replaced with concrete bridges in 1962 and 1993 respectively.
With only a single lane in each direction, the causeway experiences significant traffic congestion during peak traffic hours.
Read more about this topic: La Salle Causeway
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)