View of the Chain Bridge The Port Folio June 1810

James Finley (1756Judge James Finley gravestone, Laurel Hill United Presbyterian Church cemetery, Fayette County, PA – 1828), aka Judge James Finley, is widely recognized as the first designer and builder of the modern

suspension bridge A suspension bridge is a type of bridge in which the deck (bridge), deck is hung below suspension wire rope, cables on vertical suspenders. The first modern examples of this type of bridge were built in the early 1800s. Simple suspension bridg ...

. Born in

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

, Finley moved to a farm in

Fayette County, Pennsylvania Fayette County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is located in southwestern Pennsylvania, adjacent to Maryland and West Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 128,804. Its county seat is Uniontown. The county wa ...

, near Uniontown. Elected a justice of the peace in 1784, he went on to become county commissioner in 1789, and a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and Senate. From 1791 until his death, he was an Associate Judge for Fayette County.Kranakis, Eda, ''"Constructing a Bridge"'', The MIT Press, 1997
His

Jacob's Creek Bridge Jacob's Creek Bridge (1801, demolished 1833) was the first iron-chain suspension bridge built in the United States. Designed by James Finley, a local judge and inventor, it spanned Jacob's Creek, just south of Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania. No ...

, built in 1801 for US$600 , and demolished in 1833, was the first example of a suspension bridge using

wrought iron Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content (less than 0.05%) in contrast to that of cast iron (2.1% to 4.5%), or 0.25 for low carbon "mild" steel. Wrought iron is manufactured by heating and melting high carbon cast iron in an ...

chains and with a level deck. It connected Uniontown to Greensburg, spanning 70 feet (21 metres), and was wide.
Finley is also credited with designing and constructing a chain suspension bridge across Dunlap's Creek in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, in 1809. In 1820, however, the bridge collapsed under a heavy snow combined with the loads from a six-horse wagon team. The bridge was replaced by the

Dunlap's Creek Bridge __NOTOC__ Dunlap's Creek Bridge is the first arch bridge in the United States built of cast iron. It was designed by Richard Delafield and built by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Constructed from 1836 to 1839 on the National Road in ...

, the country's first cast-iron bridge, in 1835. Other bridges built in accord with his patent include: *

Fort Juniata Crossing Fort Juniata Crossing, also known as Fort Juniata or simply Juniata Crossing, was a British French and Indian War era fortification located along the Forbes Road, near a strategic ford of the Raystown Branch of the Juniata River about west of th ...

, sometime after 1801, on the road from Carlisle to Bedford. Demolished around 1818.John Tyler, "Juniata Crossings: Frontier Outpost," ''Pioneer America,'' Vol. 2, No. 2, July 1970), pp. 4-10
/ref> *

Potomac River The Potomac River () is in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States and flows from the Potomac Highlands in West Virginia to Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. It is long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography D ...

, 1807, 39 metre span * Chain Bridge at Falls of Schuylkill,

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

, 1808; 2 spans, eastern span 60.96 metre (200 ft), western span about 30.48 metre (100 ft); collapsed January 1816 under a heavy weight of snow. * Old Chain Bridge,

Newburyport, Massachusetts Newburyport is a coastal city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States, northeast of Boston. The population was 18,289 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. A historic seaport with a vibrant tourism industry, Newburyport includes p ...

, over the

Merrimack River The Merrimack River (or Merrimac River, an occasional earlier spelling) is a river in the northeastern United States. It rises at the confluence of the Pemigewasset and Winnipesaukee rivers in Franklin, New Hampshire, flows southward into M ...

, 1810, 74 metre (244 ft) span, replaced with a replica in 1910 *

Lehigh River The Lehigh River () is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed April 1, 2011 tributary of the Delaware River in eastern Pennsylvania. The river flows in a generally southward ...

Northampton, Pennsylvania Northampton is a borough in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, United States. Its population was 10,395 as of the 2020 census. Northampton is located north of Allentown, northwest of Philadelphia, and west of New York City. The borough is par ...

, retained in service until 1933 Although he has been credited with designing as many as forty bridges, only twenty sites have been identified. None of Finley's bridges survive, the one in Newburyport has been replaced with a functioning replica. Finley patented his system in 1808 and also published a paper on the principles of the deck-stiffened suspension bridge.Finley, James, ''"A Description of the Patent Chain Bridge"'', The Port Folio Vol. III, Bradford & Inskeep, Philadelphia, June 1810

References

External links

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Image of Finley's bridge
American civil engineers American bridge engineers 19th-century American inventors 1756 births 1828 deaths {{US-inventor-stub