10 THE KANSAS CITY BRIDGE.

stantially the same road in the course of rapid execution from the Gulf to the
great lakes.

In 1860 a contract was let for building that portion of the road extending
from the town of Cameron, on the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, to the
Missouri River, opposite Kansas City.

Although one provision of this charter, extracts from which will be found
in Appendix A, authorized the bridging of all navigable streams within the
State (the Missouri being the only river to which this clause could possibly
apply on the line above mentioned), yet it was considered so formidable an.
undertaking, that no steps whatever were taken towards building a bridge, and
the line was located parallel with the north bank of the river, through Harlem,
a village opposite Kansas City, thence extending in a north-easterly direction.

A good deal of work was done, and some $200,000 expended ; but the
breaking out of the civil war put an end to all active operations in the spring
of 1861, and for the next five years the project slumbered forgotten in the
strife which desolated the border between Missouri and Kansas.

In the year 1865 a charter was obtained from the Legislature of Missouri,
for a carriage and railroad bridge at Kansas City, a copy of which will be found
in Appendix B. This movement, however, was mainly speculative, and the
corporators, having failed to interest the necessary capital, never organized
under it, and merely held the charter as a ready means of benefiting the town
by giving it to any parties willing to undertake the construction of the bridge,
should circumstances ever render such an undertaking probable.

In the following year, the Kansas City, Galveston, and Lake Superior
Railroad, which had now been revived, and whose name was at about the
same time changed to the ‘‘ Kansas City and Cameron Railroad,” had its charter
amended so as to invest it with like privileges as to bridging the Missouri, to
those belonging to the Kansas City Bridge Company.

A general Act of Congress was approved on the 25th day of July, 1866,
authorizing the construction of bridges across the Mississippi River at Quincy,
Burlington, Hannibal, Prairie du Chien, Keokuk, Winona, Dubuque, and St.
Louis, which by a special clause was made to apply to the Missouri River at
Kansas City.