President Grant takes a personal interest in the construction of the Eads Bridge. He visits the site and is given a VIP tour of the construction. He fearlessly walks out on the planks with Captain Eads to inspect work on one of the arches.

The city of O'Fallon, Illinois, is incorporated.

East St. Louis and Cairo Short Line becomes the 11th railroad in the city. It is a narrow-gauge line, three feet from rail to rail. The purpose of this line is to break the monopoly of the Illinois Central line to Cairo, and to aid in easing freight congestion in East St. Louis when the river is frozen or when it gets low. Its depot and roundhouse is on southern part of the Island. This railroad will be taken .over by the G M & 0 in the 1940s.

East St. Louis becomes a naval power on the Mississippi when the police force charters a steamer to chase after wrong doers. The steamer "Continental," moored across the river at St. Louis, was to be the scene of an illegal prize fight (Hogan vs. Allen) which had recently been outlawed. A rousing brawl broke out between opposing factions on board the "Continental." Before the amphibious city police could respond, the "Continental" cast loose from its moorings and made a circle to head downstream. A gale-like wind caught the ship and forced it against the wharf in East St. Louis. Mayor Bowman, various civic officials, and twelve other police officers boarded the ship and made mass arrests. Our dauntless police force captured their first and only aquatic prize in the city's history. It seems that other awful crimes continued to be committed in East St. Louis, but city authorities let it be known that prize fighting would not be tolerated.

Of the roughly 600 men who worked in the caissons, fourteen men died and 118 suffered severely from the mysterious "bends" due to going below the water level in caissons with compressed air during the construction. Caisson disease was caused by nitrogen forming in the bloodstream during decompression. At the depths the men were working, they should have undergone about two hours of decompression before returning to the surface. Many of the men begin wearing copper bracelets to ward off the sickness.

Eads almost had a nervous breakdown during construction and went to Europe to get ideas from their bridges while he recovered from the intense pressure of the job. The eastern approach to the bridge was done by the Baltimore Bridge Company. Parties whose land was damaged or changed by the eastern approach were reimbursed sums totaling $60,000. Built at a cost of $9 million, it was also the first major bridge to span the Mississippi. It was the first major bridge in the world to be built of arched structural steel. From its inception, the project was subjected to scorn and ridicule, but Eads was now praised and hailed as a visionary who built an engineering marvel. The total cost of the bridge was about $13 million. It is 54 feet wide, slightly over 2,000 feet long and towers 50 feet high above the city. The bridge is connected to Union Station on Market Street in St. Louis by a 4,866 foot tunnel.

The bridge is to St. Louis what the Eiffel Tower would be to Paris. It was hailed as the Seventh Wonder of the Modem World. A saying soon developed - "The Mississippi: discovered by Desoto, explored by Marquette, spanned by Eads." The bridge is christened by Mrs. Julius Walsh, daughter of Charles Dickson, the bridge company's first president. The project took five years to complete and Eads was the first engineer to use compressed air caissons.

The Bridge Company begins charging 30 cents a ton to move coal across the river. Wiggins had been charging 60 cents and he is forced to drastically lower his rates to survive.

The Howe Baptist Building (10th and College), part of which will later become the new high school, is dedicated. Mr. Lyman Howe, from Greenfield, Mass., came to East St. Louis and made his fortune in the lumber business. In his will, he leaves $10,000 for the construction of a church and school. His firm built the Douglas School at Fourth and Mulligan.

The city is divided into three school districts. District one (Island Dist.) has Douglas school. District two (Illinois Dist.) has White School and covers area from Armour plant to Ninth and Summit. District three (East St. Louis) covers rest of city. It has 8th Street School, St. Patrick's on Collinsville and St. Louis, Franklin School at Fourth and Converse, St. Henry's school at Sixth and Broadway and a colored school at 6th and Brady.

Numerous railroads lease land from Wiggins Ferry Company for the site of their terminals, machine shops and roundhouses. The leases are structured so that Wiggins Ferry has a monopoly of the train company's business, both passenger and freight.

The new St. Henry's Church is dedicated by Bishop P. J. Baltes at -the comer of 6th and Broadway to serve the German community.

The first public library opens with John Bowman as President.

The city gets its first ice house consisting of two buildings at the comer of Cahokia and John Streets, owned by James Smith. Supplies are secured by taking ice from the river when it is freezes to a depth of ten inches.

The first horse-drawn streetcar begins operation on wooden rails. Thomas Winstanley of the East St. Louis Railway Co. was the promoter. The line ran from the Stock Yards to the Eads Bridge approach.