All early-20th-century ironworkers faced tremendous dangers in the days before mandatory safety regulations; approximately 2,000 were killed on the job between 1900 and 1920. Of all the accidents that occurred in those early years, however, none matched the great Quebec Bridge disaster.
At 5:37 p. m. on August 29, 1907, men working on the Quebec Bridge nine miles above Quebec City heard rivets start to pop and felt enormous steel girders twist beneath them. Ninety-six men died when the span crashed into the Saint Lawrence River, 33 of whom were Mohawks from the Caughnawaga Reservation. The exact cause of the catastrophe is unknown, but it may have been related to a damaged shipment of steel. Among the Mohawk people, this is still spoken of as "the disaster."
"People thought the disaster would scare the Indians away from high steel for good," said one Mohawk ironworker. "Instead, it made high steel much more interesting to them. It made them take pride in themselves that they could do such dangerous work."
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One arm of the Quebec Bridge stretches above the Saint Lawrence Rlv-erin a photograph taken on August 2S, 1907, one day before the span collapsed. At 1,800 feet, the structure was conceived as the longest cantilever bridge of its kind in the world.
Late-19th-century Mohawk ironworkers gather on a partially cottstructed bridge. Called "cowboys of the sly/' these daring men lived exciting, but often short, lives. In 1890 Ironworking had the Mghest mortaliy rate in the construction trade.
World History
