Pittsburgh and Wheeling: Sibling Rivalry

As told by Peregreen Steifel in 1910

The river giveth and the river taketh away, my father always used to say. But it also divideth one bank from the other. You got to be able to cross and double cross a river. It’s the way of commerce and prosperity.

Now, there’s many ways to cross a river: you got your ferry, your skiff, your steamboat. From the days of the Indians when they crossed in hollowed log canoes to the day that clever Lydia Shepherd wore a low-cut dress and drank Henry Clay under the table to win the approval for the National Pike to be routed through the city— Did I already tell you about that? Anyway, since there’s been a river, Wheeling folks have understood this: crossing the river is a necessity of life. Like breathing for a river town. Only question is how.

West-channel bridge was easy. The water’s shallow and the span’s narrow between the Island and the Ohio shore.

But that wide stretch from Wheeling town to the Island, that was our challenge. So, we got ourselves an idea.

Now, Pittsburgh lies eighty-seven and one-half miles upriver. The two cities have always bickered like jealous sisters over the favors the river might bring. Pittsburgh appealed to the U.S. Congress, arguing that a Wheeling bridge spanning that wide part of the river would need stone piers dug right into the river floor, and there’d be no telling how bad that would crowd the waterway.

Oh! cried Pittsburgh. It’d be a crush of steamers, packets, and barges all trying to get through the narrow gates! There was no call, says they, for one city to block river boats from all other cities for the sake of its own wish to connect the National Pike from one state to the next. Besides, they argued, steamers would get their chimneys snapped clear off trying to churn their way under such a bridge. Snapped right off like they was toy boats in the hands of a careless child.

Congress sided with Pittsburgh, but Wheeling, ha! We didn’t care. We thumbed our nose and plugged our ears and kept right on building. Erected the longest span in the world, an elegant suspension by steel guy lines angled to handle the weight. This was back in ’49.

Even Congress had to admit it was a marvel - a monument to human ambition and engineering, folks said. They made a new rule that taller steamboat chimneys had to be hinged so they could tilt back to gain clearance.

[Laughs] Oh, Pittsburgh, she was fit to be tied. Sent her steamers down to tilt their chimneys like obscene gestures and sound their whistles long and loud to let Wheeling know just what they thought of us.

We just laughed. We saw those tilted chimneys as hats doffed in respect and the whistles as a concession to our superiority and stubbornness.

[Laughs] O’ course, what the river thought of the whole thing, no one had asked.

—Transcribed from “Voices of Old Wheeling,” Cylinder #20, Peregreen Steifel, 1910