Population of the city reaches 5,420.

The Wiggins Ferry people don't support either plan and devote their efforts towards blocking the construction of a bridge to protect their own interests.

There is evidence to suggest that Boomer was looking out for Chicago interests and merely wanted to acquire the right to a bridge he never intended to build. By the end of 1867 the two companies, after months of bitter legal wrangling, decide to set aside their differences and merge. James B. Eads is the principal stock holder in the new company. According to James Primm, Eads built ironclad ships for the Union during the war and was very familiar with the Mississippi River and its tricky currents. From the time that he was eighteen years old he spent the rest of his life on the river. A self-taught engineer, he invented a diving bell and entered the salvage business with William Nelson and Calvin Case. Over a fifteen year period, Eads and his partner scoured the Mississippi bottoms searching for sunken vessels. He personally made about 500 trips below the water.

Profits are good since insurance companies offer about 50% of the value of salvaged cargoes. Eads (1820-1887) will be the perfect person to build the first bridge across the Mississippi since he became a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge about the river and its currents.

Wealthy and influential citizens who oppose Democratic leader John "Napoleon" Bowman convince the state legislature to enact a Metropolitan Police Act that creates a second police force (known as Metropolitans) in opposition to Bowman's existing force of men. E. W. Wider, a Republican, is appointed by the governor to head this new board and Captain John McLean, the city's first police commissioner, heads a separate police force of four men. This will set the stage for the outrageous turn of events that will be known as the "battle of the police departments."

Click here for more on the battle over the Metro Police bill

The city gets its first chemical company, Commercial Acid Corporation. Located near Eighth Street, the company went out of production about 1890.

Thanks to East St. Louis, St. Clair County is the fifth richest in the entire state.

Third Protestant church (1st Presbyterian) gets its start in a school building at North B Street on the Island. In 1877 they move their location to the 300 block of Collinsville Ave., and in 1892 move to the site at 13th and Gaty. By 1940 it was the largest Protestant church in the area with 1,312 members. The bell in its steeple came from an ice-breaking boat used by the Wiggins Ferry Company.