Niagara Clifton Bridge, Suspension bridge at Niagara Falls border, United States and Canada.
The Niagara Clifton Bridge, also called the first Falls View Suspension Bridge, was a wooden-decked suspension bridge over the Niagara River between Niagara Falls, New York, and Clifton, Ontario. Its deck was originally only 3 m wide, so vehicles crossed in one direction at a time; it was widened to 5 m in 1887–88. The 386 m span hung from 30 m pylons, each made of two timber trestles braced with horizontal and diagonal crossbeams.
Designed by Samuel Keefer, the first Falls View Suspension Bridge opened on January 2, 1869, with a 386 m span. A storm on January 9, 1889, set it swinging until a stay cable snapped and the deck fell into the Niagara River. A replacement opened on May 7, 1889, only 117 days later; it was dismantled in 1898 and re-erected at Queenston–Lewiston, where it served until 1962.
The bridge's name shifted with its neighbours: the Canadian end was in Clifton until 1903, when it joined the new city of Niagara Falls, Ontario. Its alternative name, Upper Suspension Bridge, distinguished it from the Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge about 2.6 km downstream. The second bridge was dismantled in 1898 and re-erected at Queenston–Lewiston, where it served until 1962.
The bridge no longer exists: the first span collapsed in the storm of 9 January 1889, and its replacement was dismantled in 1898. Nothing remains at the site, about 170 m south of today's Rainbow Bridge; the nearest crossing is the Rainbow Bridge itself. The deck was originally only 3 m wide, so vehicles crossed in one direction at a time.
The first bridge's cables were started in the winter of 1867–68, when a line was pulled across the frozen Niagara River and used to haul the rest of the cables into place. The deck was originally only 3 m wide, so wagons could cross in one direction at a time.
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