The construction of the bridge across Galveston bay has been a marvel of hustling, and the dispatch with which it has been done reflects the indomitable energy, good judgment and skill of the men who had it in charge. The work was not started on the bridge until Thursday of last week, because the material could not be gotten to the place, but when it was started Vice President Barr and General Superintendent Nixon said: “We will run trains into Galveston next Thursday.” Not many people expected that they could make good the promise, and almost everybody said they would be satisfied if the trains came within a fortnight. But the men who directed the work said that trains would cross on Thursday, and they stuck to it.
No work was ever beset by such difficulties as the work of restoring the tracks on the island and the mainland and the building of the bridge. The men on the track had to bury dead humans and animals, strewn by the hundreds over the prairies. They toiled in mud and water under a blazing sun. They had to remove hundreds of wrecked cars and twisted and tangled steel rails. They worked in the stench of dead flesh and the horrible odor of rotting grain and other wreckage. They built the track over a wreck-strewn prairie torn by the angry sea. It was difficult to get supplies to them and difficult also to get material.
The men who rebuilt the bridge worked the first day without dinner. It was difficult to get boats light enough in draft to bring provisions or materials or pile drivers to Virginia Point. When the boarding camp was pitched it stood in a new made cemetery, where hundreds of victims of the storm lay unidentified, unshrouded and uncoffined.
For the first four days after construction was commenced, the bridge timbers were rafted down Highland bayou and West bay, a distance of seven miles, to Virginia Point. When the track on the mainland had been restored to Virginia Point, the delivery of material by rail began. The storm swept away most of the pile drivers around Galveston. One marine driver was sent out and put to work on Sunday closing the gaps aggregating about 1000 feet of trestlework, where the piling had been carried away. The next day another marine driver was sent out, and Assistant Engineer Boschke, of the Southern Pacific, built two skid drivers and sent them out to the work.
GETTING THE TRACKS READY.
When a reporter was at the island end of the bridge, at 9.30 o’clock yesterday morning, the Santa Fe track at the island had just been completed. The steel laying gang on the bridge was about a mile from shore, with the stringer gangs about half that distance away. The caps were laid up all the way to the shore. The Santa Fe has some pretty rough tracks for a short distance this side of the bridge, but the track through the west yards is in good condition and in fair condition the rest of the way in.
The Galveston, Houston and Henderson Railroad completed its island track to a connection with the Santa Fe at the bridge yesterday forenoon, and the Southern Pacific folks expected to complete their track last night. The Southern Pacific track is in very good condition. It has been rebuilt under the direction of Mr. E. K. Nichols, the agent of the company at this point. Nearly all the material used was gathered up from the prairie, some of it having been washed several hundred feet away. The work was delayed by a large number of wrecked cars. There was no wrecking outfit to be had in the city, and it was necessary to remove the wreckage by slow processes.
The Southern Pacific had about 200 cars in its west yard loaded with grain, cotton and merchandise. The yard was terribly swept and many of the cars wrecked, some of them being washed nearly a quarter of a mile away. The new double-track railroad of the Southern Pacific, near the bay shore, was torn to pieces.
Bradstreet’s weekly report commented on the great calamity as follows:
“Galveston was flooded by one of the tropical storms which from time to time vex the southern coast, and as the result of its ravages, thousands of people have been killed, many more have been made homeless, and the city has been reduced to a condition which has led some people of a pessimistic turn to despair of its future. Views of this kind, however, do not take sufficient account of the energy of the American people or of the efforts which will be put forth to save to the commerce of the world one of its great ports.