Traversing the Great Glen of the Scottish Highlands for 60 miles the Caledonian Canal connects the North Sea by Beauly and Moray Firth on the east coast with the Irish Sea by Lochs Linnhe and Eil on the west. Thirty eight miles of the canal pass through freshwater lochs Douchfour, Ness, Oich and Lochy with the remaining 22 miles formed by earth cutting. Initially 28 locks, and later 29, were required to reach the summit elevation of 106 feet at Loch Oich.
Civil
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Image Credit: Courtesy Flickr/Dave Conner (CC BY 2.0)Image Caption: Caledonian CanalEra_date_from: 1804
2007
The Savannah city plan, whose execution began in 1733, is distinguished from those of previous colonial towns by the repeated pattern of connected neighborhoods, multiple squares, streets, and designed expansion into lands held by the city. It is unique in the history of urban planning in a number of aspects, not the least of which is that the squares allow for more open space in Savannah than any city layout in history.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Wikipedia/PurpleChezImage Caption: City Plan of SavannahEra_date_from: 1733
1977
Located at the northern tip of Michigan where Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, and Lake Huron join together, the Sault Ste. Marie Hydroelectric Power Complex was built to harness the hydroelectric potential of the 20-foot falls at the headwaters of the St. Marys (sic) River, the sole outlet of Lake Superior. A century after its construction, the plant remains the largest low-head hydroelectric facility in the United States. Today, the Sault Ste. Marie plant supplies electricity to area residents, especially those in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Flickr/Madison Berndt (CC BY 2.0)Image Caption: Sault Ste. Marie Hydroelectric ComplexEra_date_from: 1902
1983
The San Jacinto Monument commemorates the decisive 1836 battle near the banks of the Buffalo Bayou and the San Jacinto River that allowed Texas to win independence from Mexico. It is the world's tallest monument, rising 15 feet higher than the Washington Monument.
In 1936, Daughters and Sons of the Republic of Texas led lobbying efforts to allocate funds for a monument that would mark the importance of the Battle of San Jacinto. Ground was broken on April 21, 1936 - 100 years to the day after the victorious battle.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Flickr/Diveofficer (CC BY 2.0)Image Caption: San Jacinto MonumentEra_date_from: 1939
1992
Ever since the Gold Rush days of the 1850s, San Francisco Bay area residents and businesses had lobbied for a bridge joining San Francisco and Oakland. Early studies indicated that the bridge was impractical and infeasible; but in October 1929, President Herbert Hoover (himself an engineer) and California Governor C. C. Young appointed the Hoover-Young San Francisco Bay Bridge Commission to study the question more closely.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Flickr/David Baron (CC BY-SA 2.0)Image Caption: San Francisco - Oakland Bay BridgeEra_date_from: 1937
1986
The Salginatobel Bridge, spanning the Salgina Valley ravine, is the earliest surviving three-hinged, hollow box arch bridge designed by Robert Maillart.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Wikipedia/Rama (CC BY-SA 2.0)Image Caption: Salginatobel BridgeEra_date_from: 1930
1990
Designed to connect the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and the Great Smokey Mountains National Park in North Carolina, the Blue Ridge Parkway was planned to provide pleasant motoring and to conserve and interpret the unique natural and cultural resources of the Southern Highlands. It was conceived also as a public works project to relieve unemployment in the Appalachian region during the Great Depression.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Flickr/thewebprincess (CC BY-ND 2.0) Image Caption: A stunning view from an outlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is famous for its beautyEra_date_from: 1935
1999
The third bridge built on the same site to carry railroad tracks across the Susquehanna River just north of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the Rockville Stone Arch Bridge, at 3,820 feet long and 52 feet wide, is believed to be the longest and widest stone-arch railroad bridge in the world. A central link in rail travel between New York City and Pittsburgh, the Rockville Stone Arch Bridge accommodates four lines of railroad tracks, today serving both the Norfolk Southern and Amtrak lines.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Flickr/John Mueller (CC BY 2.0)Image Caption: Rockville Stone Arch BridgeEra_date_from: 1902
1979
Alvord Lake Bridge, along with many of Ernest Ransome's reinforced concrete buildings, survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and several subsequent tremblers with no damage. Built in 1889 by Ernest L Ransome of New York, this reinforced concrete arch bridge in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park is believed to be the oldest concrete bridge in the United States that used steel reinforcing bars to improve the behavior of the concrete. The reinforcement consists of a series of square cold-twisted steel reinforcing bars, an invention of Ransome.
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Image Credit: Public Domain (National Park Service)Image Caption: Alvord Lake BridgeEra_date_from: 1889
1969
Conceived in the early years of World War II as a plan to bury four fuel containers horizontally in a hillside at the U.S. Navy facility at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility ultimately encompassed the design and construction of 20 vertical storage tanks - each large enough to contain a 20-story building - buried in the volcanic hillside and connected by tunnels to a harbor-side pumping station more than two-and-a-half miles away.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Wikicommons/Leslie Nelson (CC BY-SA 4.0)Image Caption: Above-ground fuel storage tanks at Pearl Harbor prior to the construction of Red Hill.Era_date_from: 1943
1994
Innovations
When this 1,850-foot concrete-arch highway bridge was built on the White River in a remote region of northern Arkansas - prior to the construction of upriver, flood-control dams - flash floods occurred frequently, sometimes causing the water to rise as much as one foot per hour. Construction…
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When opened in 1903, the 1,600 foot long main span of the Williamsburg Bridge was the world's longest suspension span, surpassing the nearby Brooklyn Bridge by only 4.5 feet. The Williamsburg Bridge remained the world's longest suspension bridge span for 21 years until the opening of the Bear…
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Conceived as one of the major structures on the Prussian Eastern Railway, the Old Wisla Bridge at Tczew originally consisted of six wrought iron spans. Due to Germany's invasion of Poland at the beginning World War II in 1939, only three original spans remain today. These remaining spans…
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With the discoveries of South Africa's diamonds in the 1860s and gold in the 1880s, immigrants flooded into Cape Town and changed it into a major commercial center. Unfortunately, its water supply had not kept pace with the population growth. After several droughts and years of inadequate water…
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The first Zuiderzee Enclosure Dam ran from North Holland to the island of Wieringen, successfully barring the sea for over 50 years and protecting a large area north of Amsterdam. The total Zuiderzee project was the largest land reclamation effort in the Netherlands, developed over a period of…
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Historically, a camino real (Royal Road) is defined as a road that connects Spanish capital with Spanish capital, a distinction not shared with roads connecting ordinary Spanish or Indian villages. The term Camino Real implied that the status and privileges granted to the villas and capitals it…
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Chartered in 1825, the Louisville and Portland Canal Company was authorized to construct a canal around the rapids called the "Falls of the Ohio." Construction started on March 1, 1826. The canal and first generation of locks were completed in 1830. As originally constructed, the canal was 1.9…
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Between 1825 and 1847 the State of Ohio constructed 1,000 miles of canals and feeder canals, 33,000 acres of reservoir surface area, 29 dams across streams, 294 lift locks, 44 aqueducts and many smaller structures at a cost of about 16 million dollars. The network of navigable canals provided a…
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Designed by William A. Truesdell, a railroad engineer, the Seventh Street Improvement Arches celebrates the engineering application of mathematics to improve living conditions.
The construction of these arches presented a number of challenges. Since Seventh Street intersected the St.…
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Constructed to provide a safe, potable water supply for the citizens of Chicago, Ellis Chesbrough's Chicago Water Supply System was the first major system to utilize offshore intake systems. The system includes the landmark Chicago Water Tower and the Chicago Avenue Pumping Station. Its…
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The City Plan of Philadelphia is a seminal creation in American city planning in that it was the first American City Plan to provide open public squares for the free enjoyment of the community and a gridiron street pattern featuring streets of varying widths: wide main streets and narrower side…
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The Dublin to Belfast Rail Link established a vital connection between the capitals of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The line's most notable engineering feature was the 1,760-foot-long Boyne Bridge; it represented one of the earliest uses of calculated stresses, the first…
"Eads had to succeed in the face of conventional wisdom which doomed him to disaster. Entrenched authorities not only completely dismissed his theories, but pointed to the indifferent European experiences with what he proposed."
- ASCE Landmark Nomination Proposal, 1982
The East Maui Irrigation System is Hawaii's most dramatic water story. It began with the construction of the Old Hamakua Ditch built between 1876 and 1878. This privately financed, constructed and managed irrigation system was one of the largest in the United States. It eventually included…
El Camino Real (literally, "the royal road") is the oldest and longest historical trail in the Western Hemisphere. The transportation link has, through the centuries, been called various names, including El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro (literally, "the road to the interior" because the U.…
A tiny village on the Rio Grande River in northern New Mexico became the training center for the first American hydrographers and provided the first stream-gauging operations of the U.S. Geological Survey. To plan any water system, it is necessary to know the amount of water flowing in the…
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"Fink's truss design was one of a number of early patented solutions to [the problem of how] to carry a massive, moving weight (a train) over long spans (to avoid the expense of building piers and obstructing waterways) on easily erected bridges (often in rough terrain) with good long-term…
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In the 19th century, New York City was a burgeoning industrial and commercial metropolis - the largest city in the United States and second largest in the world. As the city's population increased, people began to call for construction of an underground railway. Many unusual engineering…
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"The majestic Forth Bridge ... symbolises the tremendous achievements of Victorian engineers and the immense strides made in the technique of bridge design and construction since the dawn of the Railway Age..."
- Derrick Bennett, Bridges: Great Buildings of the World
Throughout…
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"Some of New Hampshire's most aesthetically pleasing yet least appreciated structures are stone arch bridges."
From: Stone Arch Bridges of the Contoocook River Valley, New Hampshire Profiles, May, 1978 by Raymond Gibson
These five bridges, Carr Bridge (mid 1800's), Gleason…
