Civil

The Fort Peck Dam was a cornerstone project of the Works Progress Administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. It required the largest construction plant and workforce since the construction of the Panama Canal and peaked at 11,000 workers. It was the largest dam of any type in the world for over 30 years.

The historic Folsom Power House #1 marks one of the first successful uses of hydroelectric power in the world and the first successful transmission of power long distance (twenty-two miles to Sacramento). The old Folsom Power House still shelters the machinery generated to drive streetcars and illuminate the city of Sacramento.

The Fink Deck Truss Bridge is thought to have been originally used on the Norfolk and Western mainline railway. It was moved to its present location and converted to a vehicular bridge over a railroad spur in 1893 when the Norfolk and Western mainline was moved. It was relocated again in 1985 to Lynchburg's Riverside Park to serve as a pedestrian bridge.

In its day, the famous Erie Canal was the world's longest canal and America's greatest engineering feat. It was the principal route for emigrants from the East and agricultural products from the West. Before construction of the canal, New York City was the nation's fifth largest seaport, behind Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New Orleans. Within 15 years of its opening, New York was the busiest port in America, moving tonnages greater than Boston, Baltimore and New Orleans combined.  

The stone was set by the joint U.S.-Spanish survey party on April 10, 1799.  Made of sandstone, it is roughly two feet high and eight inches thick. On the north side of the stone is the inscription "U.S. Lat. 31, 1799." On the south side is "Dominio de S.M. Carlos IV, Lat. 31, 1799."

The Wheeling Suspension Bridge was the first bridge to span the Ohio River. It was initially completed in 1849, but destroyed by a tornado five years later. The bridge was rebuilt in 1856. The replacement bridge has the same general appearance of the original structure; the massive towers, anchorage housings, and island approach are all the original stone masonry.

One of the first major efforts to increase farming and encourage habitation in the arid regions of the western United States, the Rio Grande Project was designed to provide reliable irrigation as well as resolve a dispute over water supply with the Republic of Mexico.  The project's centerpiece is Elephant Butte Dam, a concrete gravity structure 301 feet high and 1,674 feet wide. Elephant Butte Reservoir - with a surface area of 36,600 acres and a capacity of more than 2.2 million acre-feet - was the largest reservoir in the world at the time of its completion.

An early image of the James Douglass lighthouse, with the stump of the Smeaton-designed building beside it.  

Eddystone Lighthouse is located in the English Channel, 14 miles south of Plymouth, England. The reef upon which it stands was the source of many shipwrecks... and many lighthouses, the first of which was built in 1698. The first three lighthouses were wooden, and suffered the fate of sea storms. John Smeaton  built the fourth lighthouse in 1759 of Cornish granite.   

Inventions credited to the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees and its graduates include: prestressed concrete, lighting gas, and the optical lens. The school and its graduates also have been central to research in the diffraction of light, the applications of concrete, and the measurement of the strength of materials.

In the decade following the Civil War, the Mississippi River began to lose its standing as the primary transport artery in the Midwest. Railroads were taking over, and Chicago was rapidly becoming the center of Midwestern commerce. The Eads Bridge was the first major railroad link over the Mississippi, constructed by the city of St. Louis in an attempt to maintain its dominance as a regional commercial hub.