It began with a dream, a boy and a kite. The dream was William Hamilton Merritt's. Merritt, the man who had dreamed of — and spearheaded — construction of the Welland Canal around Niagara Falls in 1829, also dreamed of a bridge spanning that river's gorge, a bridge that would connect the US and Canada. Such a bridge, he hoped, would carry the newfangled railroad, replace the cumbersome Maid of the Mist and rowboat ferries that plied the river, and be a boon to international trade. And tourism. By 1845, close to 50,000 sightseers were viewing the Falls every year. It was speculated a bridge would double — or even triple — that number, as the need for a turbulent ferry ride across the river was eliminated.

There had been earlier plans to bridge the gorge, and even one for a tunnel and suspension bridge link, but they had come to nothing. Acting on his dream, Meritt received charters from the Government of Canada and the State of New York, and the Niagara Falls International Bridge Company was launched on 23 August 1846. The Board of Directors elected Meritt as the company's first president. A site was chosen for the bridge near the river's whirlpool area and, sensibly enough, where the two sides of the river were at their closest, roughly 800 feet apart. On the American side of the river, the hamlet of Bellevue already existed, while there was no development on the Canadian side. That changed during construction as workmen and others involved in the bridge project settled there, giving birth to the community of Elgin.

There was, at the time, some controversy over whether such a bridge could even be built, with many engineers doubting the possibility. A similar bridge constructed in England in 1830 to carry the Stockton & Darlington Railroad had already failed. Designs for the Niagara bridge were, nonetheless, solicited and four were received — including one from John A. Roebling, the German-American engineer who was to design New York City's Brooklyn Bridge 20 years later and who was the first major manufacturer of wire rope in America.

The contract for the design and construction of the Niagara Bridge, however, was awarded to Charles Ellet Jr., a young engineer from Philadelphia, who had studied engineering in Paris and bridge building in Europe and America. Ellet had built the first wire-cable suspension bridge in the United States in 1842, a 342-foot span across Pennsylvania's Schuylkill River, and later gained a national reputation by building a 1,010-feet suspension bridge across the Ohio River at Wheeling, West Virginia, at that time the longest suspension bridge in the world. Ellet had written about the Niagara River project that he did not know "in the whole circle of professional schemes, a single project that it would gratify me so much to conduct to completion."

With the company formed and a design and location for the bridge decided, the first problem facing builders was the creation of an initial link between the two sides of the river, something that could not be accomplished by boat because of the roughness of the water at the site. After suggestions it be done with a rocket or by a cannon shot, the answer, suggested by a local ironworker named Theodore G. Hulett, at a dinner meeting in the Eagle Hotel at Niagara Falls, was a kite flying contest with a prize for the kite that could carry a line across the gorge and land it on the other side. The eventual winner was a local 15-year-old lad named Homan Walsh who won the contest by flying his kite, named the "Union", from the Canadian side to the American with a line attached.

Walsh had crossed the river by ferry, walked two miles to the bridge location, and then been forced to wait a day until the wind was right. He launched his kite and unrolled ball after ball of twine as it sailed across the gorge. Walsh then had to wait for a lull in the wind for the kite to settle. That lull came about midnight, and Walsh later said he could feel a slackening in his kite string, which told him the kite was settling. But then there was "a strange pulling and uneven tugging" on the string. The string had broken.

Because of ice floes, Walsh was stranded on the Canadian side of the river — cared for and fed by friendly Canadians — for eight days before he could again cross the river, recover his kite, which had been rescued by friends, repair it and try again. This time it worked perfectly, and Walsh was able to land his kite and line across the gorge.

The twine from Walsh's kite was tied to a tree and then used to haul across a slightly heavier string, then one heavier than that, and so on, eventually leading to a rope line, and later to a one-and-a-quarter inch steel cable composed of 36 strands of No. 10 wire. The cable was secured on both sides of the river, and two 50-foot towers were constructed, one on each side of the river. The 1,190-foot long cable was then passed over each of the two towers and secured. An iron basket, constructed by Hulett and said to resemble two rocking chairs facing each other, was then affixed to the cable on rollers. Suspended beneath the basket by wire cords was a plank platform for material and tools, and windlasses on each side of the river could pull the basket back and forth over the gorge. The basket solved the problem of how to get men and supplies across the river and was used until the preliminary bridge structure was completed. The basket and the cable were then removed.

The basket also gave Ellet a chance to make some money, which he did by allowing tourists who were brave enough to ride across for $1 a ride, a good price for the mid-19th century. As many as 125 people a day took the challenge and crossed using Hulett's basket, three-quarters of them reported to be women. In all, more than 2,000 people crossed in the year of the basket's operation. But problems arose for Ellet in March 1848, when Merritt examined the construction site and was displeased with the progress he saw. "The impression of my mind," he wrote in his diary, "was that very little work had yet been done."

At Merritt's urging, the company's Board of Directors informed Ellet he was to stop using the basket for paying passengers and get to work on the bridge. But before he could follow his new instructions something occurred that proved a boon to Ellet's tourist business and to interest in the Falls in general.

The American and Horseshoe Falls stopped. On 28 March 1848, an ice jam upriver cut off the flow of the Niagara River to such an extent that for a period of several hours virtually no water was reaching the Falls. Local people and tourists actually walked out in what had been the riverbed and peered over the brink of the Falls. There also were reports of horses and carriages being driven out to the edge and of a detachment of cavalry trotting up the riverbed. And the silence. People accustomed to the roar of the Falls were unable to sleep due to the eerie quiet.

The bridge, when completed, was to be an eight-foot wide roadway suspended from four 80-foothigh wooden towers by four cables, each composed of 120 strands of No. 10 wire. The roadbed itself was constructed by laying planking on a wooden form connected to the cables beginning at both sides and progressing to meet in the middle. It was during this process that an accident involving the basket had occurred.

During construction of the roadbed, a thunderstorm with brisk winds arose, causing the bridge to sway dangerously. The Canadian side of the roadbed, which was the least complete, was swinging wildly enough that the uncompleted bridge section was thrown over the cable line hauling Hulett's basket, leaving three workmen trapped and hanging onto the cables. The men were forced to ride out the storm. When the wind had subsided, however, a short ladder was attached to Hulett's basket and a volunteer was called for to go out and try to rescue the trapped workmen.

A man named William Ellis stepped forward. He was instructed to go out in the basket and retrieve the men, but because of concerns about the amount of weight the line could take, he was told to retrieve only one man at a time. The whole weight of the bridge section already lay across the cable, and there were serious questions as to whether it would even bear the weight of two men. Bring one man back, he was told, and then go out for another. Ellis went in the basket, which was winched out to the farthest man, the ladder extended, and the man gotten into the basket. The entreaties of the other two trapped men were so desperate, however, that Ellis ignored his instructions, gathered in all three men and returned. Fortunately, the line held.

On 20 July 1848, the bridge was officially opened when Ellet drove a horse and buggy across from the American side to the Canadian and then back again. The finished structure was 762 feet long and eight feet wide, with its heavy oak plank roadway suspended 220 feet above the river. The bridge swayed in the wind and even dipped under traffic but held. As planned, it was suspended from four 80-foot towers by four cables, each composed of about 120 strands of No. 10 wire, held under tension and secured to rock on each side of the river. "The bridge at a distance," the Baltimore Patriot said the next day, "does not look larger comparatively than a piece of tape, or rather resembles a (ribbon) stretched from shore to shore with Lilliputians passing to and from. The wires which suspend it are almost invisible, and it seems to hang in the air."

With the bridge walkway complete, Ellet saw another moneymaking opportunity and began charging tolls of 25 cents for each person crossing the bridge (and an additional 25 cents for a horse) but again ran into trouble with the company, which felt the tolls were too high. In addition, Ellet was keeping the money collected and not turning it over to the company, which eventually discharged him. Unmoved, Ellet continued to collect tolls and, at one point, hired his brother and "a band of toughs" to take over both sides of the bridge. The matter was finally resolved when Ellet, his brother and some of the "toughs" were arrested and a court order was obtained prohibiting Ellet from collecting tolls.

Two years later another suspension bridge was erected between Lewiston, New York and Queenston, Ontario by the 23-year-old engineer Edward W. Serrell. That bridge opened on 20 March 1851. The bridge was wrecked, however, by severe winds in 1864, and a replacement was not built until 35 years later.

It soon became apparent, however, that Ellet's bridge could not handle the number of people wanting to use it. It was too narrow. Also in 1851, construction of the Great Western Railway of Canada was begun, making a railroad link across the river a necessity. Before that there were only a short horse- drawn rail line on the Canadian side and two short lines on the American. The Great Western, however, would provide a trunk line to Windsor, and a bridge, once constructed, would connect that line with the small American lines that would soon be combined as the New York Central.

The contract for the new bridge went to Roebling. Construction of the second Niagara Falls bridge, a two-level structure that would carry trains on the upper deck and pedestrians, horses, and carriages on the lower, was begun in September 1855 with Ellet's bridge serving as a platform from which construction of the second bridge was carried out.

Roebling's bridge was completed in 1855, and Ellet's bridge was abandoned. The first bridge across the Niagara gorge had served for only four years, had never become the railroad bridge it was envisioned to be, and had made its greatest contribution serving simply as a platform from which its replacement was built. Roebling's bridge would carry traffic over the river for the next 42 years.

Chuck Lyons. Bridge Across Niagara: A Tale of Persistence. History Magazine. August/September 2008.