In the past century and a half, several bridges have spanned the Illinois River at Pekin. Today’s “Pekin bridge,” the John T. McNaughton Bridge, was dedicated in 1982. Prior to that, Pekin’s bridge was a lift bridge that was built in the late 1920s and was dedicated on 2 June 1930.
Before that, however, Pekin not only had long had a railroad bridge, but non-rail traffic was able to cross the river over a plank bridge at the foot of Court Street . The first bridge across the Illinois River at Pekin was built about 1860 — it was the old Peoria & Pekin Union Railway bridge.
The P. & P. U. railroad bridge was removed in 1898-1899 to make way for a new railroad bridge, which was known for most of its history as the Terminal Bridge. The new railroad bridge was a 679-foot steel swingspan bridge, and was built in 1899-1900 under the direction of Pekin City Engineer Dietrich H. Jansen (1872-1951). The Peoria & Pekin Traction Company had the bridge built and was the original owner. In 1906, ownership of the P&PT passed to the Peoria Terminal Company, a subsidiary of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railroad system — hence the new name for the bridge.
Over the decades, the Terminal Bridge was hit by barges and tugs many times. The end of the Terminal Bridge came in 1974, when the bridge was hit twice in less than two months. In February of 1974, a towboat with six barges hit the bridge’s superstructure. Then a tow of six grain barges hit the structure in April 1974. The Interstate Commerce Commission approved the bridge’s abandonment that summer, and dismantling started July 23. Two spans were removed 2 Aug. 1974 by explosives. Eight piers on the river bed were removed over the next two months.
Though it has been 50 years since the Terminal Bridge was removed, Pekin still has a railroad bridge: the Union Pacific Railroad Drawbridge, built in 1912 by the Chicago & Northwestern Railway, which became a part of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1995. Briefly crossing the city’s southwest corner, this single-track railroad bridge is a steel truss with a lift span and is about 1,500 feet long, with its longest span about 175 feet long. The bridge is 34 feet above the river level and handles about eight trains a day. The U.S. Coast Guard says this bridge is the second most frequently struck bridge in the U.S. – 95 collisions from 1992 to 2001. (The most frequently struck bridge is also on the Illinois River – the E.J .& E. Bridge at Morris, Illinois.)
Regarding Pekin’s non-railroad bridges, the first “Pekin bridge” — the Old Wagon Bridge, also known as the plank bridge — existed from 1885 to 1929, and was built by the Horace E. Horton Co. of Minneapolis. Though it is probably not well remembered today, in the lore of Pekin’s past a humorous anecdote about its construction and dedication has been handed down. The story is recorded in the 1949 Pekin Centenary, pp.39, 41, which tells of events during the time of Pekin Mayor John L. Smith (1885-1886). Before it had appeared in the Centenary, however, the story was told in the pages of the Pekin Daily Times on 16 Jan. 1930, and reprinted in the special bridge dedication edition of the Daily Times on 2 June 1930.
The Pekin Centenary says it was during Smith’s term that “the first plank bridge was built across the river here at a cost of $17,500,” the city council having taken a pass on a proposal to build a pontoon bridge for $14,500. Though less expensive, a pontoon bridge would have impeded river traffic.
Around the same time, Pekin got its first electric street lights, contracting for a mere $5,000 a year to install and maintain them. The city decided to have a grand public celebration to inaugurate the new bridge and the new lights – but the bridge workers decided to celebrate in a way that wasn’t on the official program of events.
According to the 1930 Daily Times article, there had been some kind of falling out between the city’s bridge committee members and Earnest Kidd, the assistant foreman, and Kidd decided to get even by pulling a fast one on the city council with the help of the foreman, Jack Jennings.
As the Centenary relates:
“Mayor Smith, himself, rode the first rig across the new bridge, in impressive ceremonies, but his triumphant opening was somewhat marred by the fact that much of the populace knew and the rest soon learned that Charles Holland had actually been first to cross the new bridge, thanks to a conspiracy with the workmen. The last of the planking was not to be completed until just before the mayor was to cross, but workmen labored through the night to lay the planking so that Holland could drive a carriage over the bridge at the crack of dawn, and then they hastily took up the planking again to be relaid for the mayor.”
The Centenary does not say what Mayor Smith thought about the prank, but the Daily Times story says that he and the aldermen were very upset and even sent Police Chief Tim Sheehan to have Holland arrested. Jennings and Kidd, however, were tall and imposing men, and Jennings told Sheehan that if he arrested Holland he would have to arrest him too, so Holland was left unmolested.
The story, of course, does not end there. On pages 67 and 69, the Centenary tells of the construction and dedication of Pekin’s new lift bridge 45 years later, and mentions that Holland, by then a well known and respected insurance man, was there too:
“The stock market had fallen apart in 1929, and the Great Depression was underway in 1930, and yet the record shows that in this year the new half-million dollar Pekin bridge was completed . . . Completion of that bridge marked one of the biggest celebrations in Pekin history. Rep. Martin B. Lohmann (now Senator) who led the fight for state funds, drove the first car across. It was Fred Moenkemoeller’s car, and this time they forestalled any double-shuffle such as had taken place at the opening of the old bridge by having Charles Holland, now getting along in years, ride across with the others in the first car. It was Holland, the reader will remember, who had driven over Pekin’s old bridge ahead of the mayor to be the first to cross, and make a joke of the opening ceremony.”
Jump ahead another 50 years or so, and Pekin celebrated the opening of the new John T. McNaughton Bridge. Holland had died long before, of course, but one of the leading dignitaries at the 1930 festivities, Martin Lohmann, revered as the father of the 1930 Pekin bridge, was there for the bridge dedication in 1982.
As indicated above, as an Illinois State Representative, Lohmann had secured the funding for the construction of the lift bridge, and he was given the honor of driving the first car across the bridge during the dedication ceremonies on 2 June 1930. In 1925, Lohmann got HB 251, the “Pivot Bridge Bill,” passed in the General Assembly, providing $400,000 for a new Pekin bridge. Pekin city, Pekin Township, and Tazewell County provided another $125,000.
The low bid for a low bridge was $528,000, but for a high bridge the low but was about $600,000 — which is about what the final cost was. The 1930 bridge was was 1,555 feet long, with a lift span that was 250 feet long, 24 feet wide, and weighed 450 tons (900,000 pounds). The lift span was floated into place using five submerged barges, the first time that technique had been used to build a bridge across the Illinois River.
Prior to his election as a State Representative in 1922, Lohmann, who worked in insurance and real estate, had served four years as Pekin’s city clerk and another seven years as a member of the Pekin City Council. A Democrat, he served a total of five terms in the Illinois House of Representatives and then was elected to the Illinois Senate in Nov. 1932, being re-elected in 1936 and again 1940. He retired from the Senate in 1953.
That, of course, is only the barest summary of Lohmann’s life and career. Perhaps the chief resource for learning about him is his Memoir, which the Illinois General Assembly Oral History Program published in 1980 a week after his death. Although that is not a part of the Pekin Public Library’s Local History Room collection, the Local History Room does have an extended biography and genealogical account of Lohmann which tells his life story up the early 1930s. The biography is found in John Leonard Conger’s 1932 “History of the Illinois River Valley,” vol. 2, pages 220-226.
“Martin B. Lohmann, who has made a most commendable record as a member of the state legislature since first elected to that body in the fall of 1922, represents the district comprising Tazewell, Brown, Cass, Menard, Mason and Schuyler counties,” Conger says in introducing his subject. Conger’s biography of Lohmann was not, however, written by Conger himself, but was quoted from an unnamed “contemporary biographer.”
This is how the biography sums up Lohmann’s career up to that point:
“His record reveals the overcoming of the handicap of practically no education in his early life and a long steady pull at his ambitions until he has achieved independence and political success and is recognized by both the people of his county and the state of Illinois as a fighter for those things that will be of benefit to the masses of the people.”
A Tazewell County native, Lohmann was born 27 Aug. 1881 in Groveland Township, the son of John Baltazer and Catherine Kief Lohmann. Martin Lohmann’s father was the son of German immigrants from Hesse-Darmstadt named Johan Georg (John George) Lohmann and Ann Eliza Lannert. Johan Georg, son of Jakob Lohmann, was born in Oberstein, Hesse-Darmstadt, in 1826, and came to America in 1851. He settled at first at Sand Prairie near South Pekin, moving in 1868 to a farm at Brush Hill northeast of Pekin. Johan Georg’s eldest son, John Baltazer, was born in 1854, and married Catherine Kief in 1877. John Baltazer ran a farm and a farm implement business, and also served as tax collector for Tazewell County.
Turning to John Baltazer’s son Martin, the biography says:
“When Martin B. Lohmann was twelve years of age he left school to assist his father in making a living. His first employment was in a grocery store, where he served as delivery boy, as clerk and in other capacities for a period of nine years . . . Upon leaving the grocery business he was employed by Dr. G. Z. Barnes as the salesman for a magazine that was edited by him. This position lasted for only one year, when the publication became bankrupt. Our subject then entered the tailoring business. Next he conducted a butcher shop in Pekin for a number of years but eventually sold this to enter the insurance and real estate business, in which he still continues. He has always been politically active and has served his city as alderman, city clerk and commissioner. One of the outstanding accomplishments of his city political career was his success in getting the city to pay off railroad bonds totaling seventy-five thousand, five hundred dollars, which had been drawing interest for fifty-two years. This action was taken when Mr. Lohmann was alderman and he saw the final payment when he was serving as commissioner.”
In 1905, Lohmann married Viola Ruth Rueling of Pekin, daughter of John V. and Elizabeth Schaffnett Rueling. Like Lohmann’s grandparents, Viola’s father also was an immigrant from Hesse-Darmstadt. Martin and Viola’s only child, born in 1912, was Nadine Veta Lohmann, whom the biography says was an accomplished singer. “The entire Lohmann family are gifted musicians and nearly every one of them can play some musical instrument,” the biography says. Martin’s wife Viola died in 1952.
As a State Representative, the biography says:
“He was the father of the bill that gave Pekin the new bridge that spans the Illinois river and connects State Highway No. 9 and Federal Highways Nos. 6 and 24. His first effort on this strategic piece of legislation was begun in 1923. From that time until 1925 he worked tirelessly, interviewing every member of the upper and lower house of the assembly, explaining to them the advantage of a bridge across the river near the center of the state. In 1925 he introduced the bill asking the state for four hundred thousand dollars. The bill was passed without an opposing vote, and today Pekin boasts of one of the finest and most modern bridges in the entire state. The bill was known as the ‘Pivot Bridge Bill’ and its author is known as ‘Marty Lohmann, The Bridge Builder.’ . . . In the beginning the people of his district thought of the bridge project only as a dream with little hope that it would ever be realized, and had it not been for the confidence and effort of Mr. Lohmann the people of Pekin would still be using the condemned structure of a bridge that was built half a century ago.”
Fittingly, the Interstate 474 bridge over the Illinois River at Creve Coeur, dedicated in August 1978, was named the Shade-Lohmann Bridge, jointly in honor of Lohmann and J. Norman Shade, mayor of Pekin.
While the lift bridge served Pekin well for many years, already by the 1960s plans began to be made for a replacement bridge. Work began on the new John T. McNaughton Bridge on 12 May 1975, and the first steel span on the new bridge was lifted into place on 6 May 1980. Lohmann, then 98 years old, was among those especially invited to attend the ceremonies at the bridge that day. Just a few weeks later, on 29 May 1980, he passed away, and was buried in Lakeside Cemetery in Pekin beside his wife Viola.
