alternatehistory.com

Update time. I found precedent for my original plan, hooray! The two sections really don't have anything to do with each other, but I didn't want to have the New Mexico update by itself.


Part Seventy-Seven: Crossing Rivers

New Mexico and the Trans-Pecos:
Since the Colorado gold rush, the population of New Mexico territory increased by the tens of thousands every decade. While there was an initial movement to create a state out of the territory in the early 1860s, the National War put a hold on any plans New Mexico had for statehood. After Colorado was admitted as a state in 1876, the movement for statehood for New Mexico was rekindled. However, the process stalled as Congress continually failed to act on any legislation regarding statehood for New Mexico.

As the debate over the gold standard came to a head, New Mexico grew more prominent in politics. Some Republican politicians began pushing for the admission of the territory as a state to give more support to the Republican bimetallist platform, but the Democratic victory in the 1880 elections pushed the admission of New Mexico back even further. During that time, the territorial legislature started wondering whether it was worth it to keep the southern area of the territory south of El Paso. The Trans-Pecos as the region was called was for the most part uninhabited with only a few small towns marking the land route between San Antonio and El Paso[1]. The New Mexico territorial legislature and members of Congress were unsure of what to do with the Trans-Pecos region when the possibility of statehood came up in 1885. The decision was finally made to have the Trans-Pecos revert to unorganized territory[2] while the remainder of New Mexico was granted statehood in February of 1886, bringing the forty-third state into the Union.


High Above the River:
While there had been many developments in ground transportation up to the 1880s, bridging some of the wider rivers still proved a great difficulty to engineers. In many cities along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, for instance, ferries remained the most used way to cross the river up into the early 20th century. However, beginning in the 1870s, new innovations in bridge construction enabled bridges to span newer and longer spaces. Particularly, the greater use of suspension bridges and advances in their construction allowed for much longer single spans between supports.

While suspension bridges had been built previously, they were mostly over minor distances and smaller rivers. The first modern suspension bridges to be built across major rivers were the Brooklyn Bridge and the Eads Bridge in Saint Louis. The Brooklyn Bridge was the first bridge to connect the island of Manhattan with Brooklyn. It was built with a used new developments to sink the supports for the towers far into the ground below the East River. The bridge's span came to 1,587 feet[3] and was the longest suspension bridge span in the world at the time of its completion.

However, the Brooklyn Bridge's record span was surpassed only three months later upon the completion of the Lewis and Clark Bridge, the first bridge in Saint Louis to cross either the Missouri or Mississippi Rivers[4]. The bridge, designed by architect and engineer James Eads, was the first suspension bridge with a span of over 1,600 feet. While its supports were on land and so did not present any design challenges, the Lewis and Clark Bridge was the first major bridge to use primarily metal construction, rather than wood or stone. With ribbed steel towers 280 feet tall, the Lewis and Clark Bridge dominated the Saint Louis skyline and became a symbol of the city.

[1] This is true even now in OTL. The region has a total population of 830,000 and the El Paso metro area has a population of 775,000.
[2] OTL precedent for this comes from the reversion of the eastern Dakotas to unorganized territory after the admission of Minnesota in 1858.
[3] Slightly shorter than the OTL Brooklyn Bridge.
[4] TTL's Lewis and Clark Bridge is at the location of OTL's Eads Bridge.