BUILDING A BRIDGE IN SEVENTEEN HOURS.
In July, 1861, General J. D. Cox’s division was chasing General Henry A. Wise’s Confederate forces up the Kanawha River, in West Virginia, and to impede the rapid advance of the Union troops the bridge across Pocotaligo Creek was destroyed. The stream was only a couple of rods wide, but its banks were steep and the bed of the creek was too much of a slough to allow fording by the wagon trains and artillery. The regular army engineers wanted a few weeks’ time to prepare plans, and considered it necessary to send to Cincinnati for tools and material to construct a bridge. The General, being informed that theEleventh Ohio Infantry Regiment, then encamped at “Poco,” had a company composed entirely of mechanics, sent for the captain, and, after a short conference with that officer, directed him to put his men at work. Commencing at nine o’clock in the morning, in seventeen hours a substantial “bridge” was built across the creek, and which was used by army wagons, cannons and soldiers for a long time, probably until the war closed. A raft of logs, timbers from a deserted house, and poles cut in the woods near by, were the materials used for the bridge, the tools being a few axes and augers. These practical bridge-builders were members of Company K, principally machinists, molders, etc., from the shops of Lane & Bodley, of Cincinnati, the captain being their late employer, P. P. Lane, afterward colonel of the regiment.