32 THE KANSAS CITY BRIDGE.

Company at such intervals as the carpenters could be most advantageously
employed upon it, in 1867 and 1868.

The carriage road was continued south of the bridge only far enough to
allow teams to turn off into the adjoining streets. The railroad approach leaves
the bridge on a 9° curve to the right, this curve beginning at the middle of the
132-foot span ; with a maximum descending grade of 42.24 feet in a mile, it
passes through the bluff in a clay cut 72 feet deep, and then passes down along
a rock cut in the west side of the bluff to the depot grounds in the West Kansas
bottom, The grading of this approach was let by contract and the work com-
pleted during the year 1867.