America transformed : engineering and technology in the nineteenth century

Circles in the Sky

Other Titles of Interest

America Transformed: Engineering and Technology in the Nineteenth Century, by Dean Herrin. (ASCE Press, 2003).Displays a visual sampling of engineering and technology from the 1800s that demonstrates the scope and variety of the U.S. industrial transformation.(ISBN 978-0-7844-0529-1)

Changing Our World: True Stories of Women Engineers,by Sybil E. Hatch. (ASCE Press, 2006). Highlights the real-life stories of hundreds of women engineers, celebrating their contributions to every aspect of modern life.(ISBN 978-0-7844-0841-4)

Engineering Legends: Great American Civil Engineers,by Richard G. Weingardt. (ASCE Press, 2005). Chronicles the personal lives and professional accomplishments of 32 great U.S. civil engineers from the 1700s to the present. (ISBN 978-0-7844-0808-8)

Karl Terzaghi: The Engineer as Artist,by Richard E. Goodman. (ASCE Press, 1999).Biographical account of the friendships, confl icts, and enormous successes of the man who laid the groundwork for soil mechanics. (ISBN 978-0-7844-0364-8)

Washington Roebling’s Father: A Memoir of John A. Roebling,edited by Donald Sayenga. (ASCE Press, 2009).Portrays the life and achievements of a legendary engineer through the eyes of his equally accomplished son, with annotations for hundreds of people, places, events, and technologies.(ISBN 978-0-7844-0948-0)

Women in Engineering: Pioneers and Trailblazers,by Margaret E. Layne. (ASCE Press, 2009).Assembles signifi cant articles, lectures, and reports chronicling visionary women who defi ed gender stereotypes and opened the way for women to fully participate in the engineering professions. (ISBN 978-0-7844-0980-9)

Circles in the SkyThe Life and Times of George Ferris

Richard G. Weingardt, P.E.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weingardt, Richard.Circles in the sky the life and times of George Ferris / Richard G.Weingardt. p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-0-7844-1010-31. Ferris, George Washington Gale, 1859–1896. 2. Structural engineers—United States—Biography. 3. Ferris wheels—History. 4. World’s Columbian Exposition(1893 : Chicago, Ill.) I. Title.TA140.F455W45 2009624.1092—dc22[B]

2009007618

Published by American Society of Civil Engineers1801 Alexander Bell DriveReston, Virginia 20191www.pubs.asce.org

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Cover photographs courtesy of Douglas County Historical Society; author photo-graph by Evelyn Weingardt. Page vi photograph courtesy of Douglas County Histori-cal Society.

Copyright © 2009 by the American Society of Civil Engineers.All Rights Reserved.ISBN 978-0-7844-1010-3Manufactured in the United States of America.

17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 1 2 3 4 5

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To my wife Evie, always supportive, encouraging

and in the highest of spirits even during bleak times

THE FERRIS WHEEL

vii

Contents

List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiby Norman D. Anderson

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix

Chapter One Legendary He Was . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter Two Westward to the Colonies . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Chapter Three Taming the Prairie. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Chapter Four Carson Valley to Troy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Chapter Five Founding of a Firm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Chapter Six Building Big Bridges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Chapter Seven Piercing Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

Chapter Eight Incredible Wheel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Chapter Nine Lawsuits and Ruin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

Chapter Ten Aftermath—Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

Appendix A Chronology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

Appendix B George Ferris Family Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

viii CIRCLES IN THE SKY

Appendix C Details of the Ferris Wheel . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Appendix D Conclusions Section of Ferris’s RPI Thesis. . . . 139

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Other Research Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

About the Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

ix

List of Illustrations

The Ferris Wheel at the Chicago World’s Exposition in 1893. . . . . . . viGeorge Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2Silvanus Ferris, George’s grandfather . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Rev. George Washington Gale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Old Main at Knox College . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23Nathan Olmstead Ferris, George’s uncle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24George W. G. Ferris, Sr., George’s father . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25Martha Hyde Ferris, George’s mother . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26Ferris Ranch, Carson Valley, Nevada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33Margaret (Ferris) Dangberg, George’s sister . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34Ranch house where Ferris lived as a boy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35Cradlebaugh water wheel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38Ferris Mansion, Carson City, Nevada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39Oakland Military Academy, Oakland, California. . . . . . . . . . . . 41Blue spruce at Carson City capitol building. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42Gen. James H. Ledlie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48Henderson Bridge over Ohio River between Indiana and Kentucky . . 53Ninth Street Bridge, Pittsburgh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62Central Bridge, Cincinnati . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66Rookery Offi ce Building, Chicago . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68Daniel H. Burnham. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71William F. Gronau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75Ferris Wheel under construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79Signed Ferris Wheel document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80Luther V. Rice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81Scaffolding for Ferris Wheel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82Axle of Ferris Wheel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83Power plant of Ferris Wheel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84Ferris Wheel lighted at night . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87View through Wheel’s framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88Passenger view from Ferris Wheel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90Ferris Wheel in operation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95Spider-web construction of Ferris Wheel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

x CIRCLES IN THE SKY

Buffalo Bill Cody . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103Vienna, Austria, Ferris wheel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105London Eye Ferris wheel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125Singapore Flyer Ferris wheel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126The Ferris Wheel at the Chicago World’s Exposition in 1893. . . . . . 134Author Richard G. Weingardt in front of the London Eye . . . . . . . 161

xi

Foreword

Writing the foreword to Richard Weingardt’s Circles in the Sky is both an honor and a challenge. A challenge because I want to introduce

readers to George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. and Ferris wheels without giving away too much of the story that Rich has so masterfully told. Also a challenge because I want my comments to help you fully appreciate what Rich has accomplished—pulling together hundreds of sources and dozens of interviews in a way that has not been done before. As Weingardt explains in this book, he was able to fi nd out much about Ferris, his ancestors, and his personal and professional life, but a few things remain a mystery, add-ing an extra element of interest.

I am often asked how I got interested in Ferris wheels. While doing re-search nearly 30 years ago, I stumbled across an account of the giant wheel George Ferris built for Chicago’s World Columbian Exposition in 1893. His wheel was 264 feet tall with 36 carriages the size of streetcars, each capable of carrying 60 passengers. And perhaps just as impressive as the wheel’s size is the fact that Ferris fi nanced and built it in only six months after receiving the concession to do so!

Before what became known worldwide as the Ferris wheel, early ob-servation wheels were rather crudely built wooden structures no more than 40 to 50 feet high. Ferris’s great circular structure, made mainly of steel, was a tension wheel similar in design to a bicycle wheel. This giant wheel, which became the star attraction of the Columbian Exposition, represented a quantum leap in both size and design. After reading about this marvel of engineering, I was hooked on Ferris wheels and especially their history.

Circles in the Sky could serve as a case study for the “nature vs. nurture” debate that has long permeated the natural and social sciences. How much of who we are and what we do is a result of heredity, and how much comes from environmental factors, such as upbringing and formal education? Wein-gardt describes how these two forces shaped George Ferris and help explain his many accomplishments—not only the Wheel that bears his name, but also his work as a engineer building bridges and other structures, and his success as a businessman directing the operation of several companies.

xii CIRCLES IN THE SKY

With respect to “nature,” Rich describes the life spans of Ferris’s nine siblings. George himself was still a young man when he died. Two of his brothers also died early. However, one of his sisters lived to be almost a hundred. For the most part, members of the Ferris family lived what was considered long lives at the time. Other family characteristics were more diffi cult to quantify but, in general, the Ferrises appear to have been intel-ligent, creative, hard-working risk-takers, and the men Ferris women mar-ried were of similar stock.

On the “nurture” side, George came from a long line of Ferrises that today would be called entrepreneurs. He was educated at Rensselaer Poly-technic Institute, one of our nation’s most prestigious engineering schools. Experience gained working with outstanding engineers and business leaders of the late nineteenth century also contributed to his development.

Weingardt, perhaps like no one else, has both the ability and experi-ence required to pull together this account of George Ferris and his contri-butions as one of our nation’s truly great engineers. Educated as an engi-neer and president of his own consulting company of more than 40 years, Rich has both the technical background and business experience to ascribe meaning to articles found in newspapers and journals, to family and in-stitutional histories, to individual accounts, and to interviews with Ferris family members and those interested in Ferris wheel history. In retrospect, Weingardt and George Ferris have a lot in common.

Rich’s passion for engineering has been exemplifi ed in many ways, in-cluding his column, “Engineering Legends,” in ASCE’s Journal of Leadership and Management in Engineering. His column on George Ferris was combined with the profi les of 31 other engineers and published as a book, Engineer-ing Legends (Weingardt 2005). And while preparing Circles in the Sky, Rich found time to write “The World’s Latest Structural Record Holder—The Sin-gapore Flyer” in the April, 2008, issue of Structural Engineer. Evidence sug-gests that Weingardt, too, has been hooked on Ferris wheels. At least I hope so, because I look forward to reading his future articles about giant wheels as well as about ways engineers have contributed to the betterment of the human condition.

Rich should be commended for his efforts to advance the engineering profession by writing Circles in the Sky. And as a fellow author, I espe-cially appreciate his including a comprehensive list of sources along with the names of the people he interviewed. Including the birth and death dates in parentheses for people who were part of George Ferris’s life—and there were many—is helpful. So is having a chronology of events at the end of the book. These additions, requiring extra work on the author’s part, are but a few examples of Weingardt’s excellent scholarship.

I hope copies of Circles in the Sky fi nd their way into many public libraries as well as secondary schools and institutions of higher education. We live in a time when professions in science and technology, especially engineering, desperately need to attract talented young people to careers in these fi elds. Some argue it is key to America’s maintaining a place in the global economy. Just think: Reading Circles in the Sky and perhaps doing

FOREWORD xiii

a book report or even a blog might lead a student to consider a career in engineering.

Enjoy the book, and learning about the life and times of the legend-ary George Ferris, as I know you will. But be aware that reading about the history of Ferris wheels, or even riding on them, can become addictive and you, too, may get hooked. I hope so!

Norman D. Anderson, Ph.D.Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Science Education, North Carolina State University, and author of Ferris Wheels: An Illustrated History

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Preface

Although one of the most fascinating and important fi gures in nine-teenth-century America, George W. G. Ferris, Jr., the creator of the

world-famous Ferris Wheel, has never been the subject of a full-length bi-ography until now. Circles in the Sky reveals previously unknown details about Ferris, his life and times, and the origins of the Ferris family—one of the nation’s oldest, most widespread, and interesting families.

Studying someone as mesmerizing and mysterious as Ferris is like solv-ing an intriguing whodunit because none of his personal records remain. Much has been written about the greatest of his exploits, the Ferris Wheel, and about the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where his great Wheel fi rst appeared. Numerous nineteenth-century newspapers and magazines with articles about Ferris exist, as do thousands of pages of legal documents from two major lawsuits he was involved with. These accounts provide important glimpses into who this legendary American engineer was and what he had to do to build his engineering marvel. Piecing together personal data saved by individuals, and doing a balancing act to get the facts right and the story straight, has resulted in this comprehensive ac-count of the life and times of George Ferris.

With several notebooks and boxes full of research material, much of it not previously published, my challenge in writing about an engineering icon so long gone was deciding what to include, what to leave out, and what to emphasize. But rather than focusing on the engineering and techni-cal details of Ferris’s projects, Circles in the Sky highlights George Ferris the man—where he came from, how he came to be the one who built the Wheel, and how his infatuation with his invention brought him to ruin. It appeals to all readers, young and old, engineer and nonengineer alike.

In America’s attempt to make its fi rst international exposition in 1893 the greatest the world had ever seen, Chicago’s Exposition Commit-tee searched for an engineering marvel that would astonish everyone. It wanted to overshadow France’s splashy Eiffel Tower, the highlight of the 1889 “Exposition Universelle” in Paris. The French tower, with its riveted

xv

xvi CIRCLES IN THE SKY

wrought-iron structure left exposed, symbolized progress and represented a major achievement that dared a rival. Was there a U.S. civil engineer who could “out-Eiffel” Eiffel?

Young George Ferris undauntedly answered the challenge, the only American engineer to successfully do so. The engineering masterpiece he designed and built easily became the star of the 1893 Columbian Exposi-tion. However, the Ferris Wheel was not his only noteworthy engineering accomplishment. There were hundreds of important bridges on which, if he was not the engineer-of-record, Ferris was the chief inspector, steel tester, and/or engineering consultant. This phase of his engineering life, along with his ten-year marriage, are detailed in this biography.

Ferris’s work popularized the use of structural steel, not just for sta-tionary structures but also for moving structures and for all types of en-gineered products of the modern era. He proved that large tension-spoke wheels (giant bicycle wheels) could serve as important structural elements.

Since the turn of the twenty-fi rst century, several countries, including England, China, Germany, Iraq, Japan, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates, have built or have plans underway to build towering Ferris wheels more than 500 feet tall. In March, 2008, Popular Mechanics re-ported, “Big-money race for world’s tallest Ferris wheels heats up. When it comes to status symbols, nothing beats a circle. There is a global race to create the biggest Ferris wheel, and while these attractions are built for fun, the stakes are serious. These wheels have almost replaced the skyscraper as icons” (McCarthy 2008).

* * *

The Ferrises, like many large American families in the nation’s fi rst few cen-turies, often had the same fi rst name for more than one member of the fam-ily. Because George W. G. Ferris, builder of the Ferris Wheel, was a junior with the same fi rst and middle names as his father, he is here called George Jr. while he was still under the purview of his father, and then George or Ferris in the rest of this book. His father is typically referred to as George Sr. Also, those people vitally important to the George Ferris story or im-portant fi gures in the engineering profession have their birth and death dates after their names, in parentheses, when fi rst introduced [e.g., John Roebling (1806–1869) of Brooklyn Bridge fame and Martha Hyde Ferris (1820–1897), George’s mother].

Most dictionaries defi ne the phrase “Ferris wheel” as being “a large upright, rotating wheel having suspended cars in which passengers ride for amusement or observation.” Throughout this book, the original Ferris Wheel, constructed in Chicago for the 1893 Columbian Exposition, is iden-tifi ed with wheel spelled with a capital “W”—Wheel. All other references to copies, duplications, or refi nements of the wheel are spelled with a small “w”—Ferris wheel. (The passenger-carrying components of Ferris wheels are some times called cabins, cars, baskets, carriages, coaches, gondolas, capsules, or compartments.)

PREFACE xvii

Appendix A, the Chronology, lists important events affecting Ferris and the direction his career took. Before beginning Chapter Two, it is recom-mended that you scan Appendix B, The George Ferris Family Tree.

For those desiring to convert any distances or dimensions from English to metric measure, the following may be useful: one foot equals 0.3048 me-ters, or, put another way, one meter equals 3.28 feet.


xix

Acknowledgments

Many people over the years have contributed greatly to this project, whether they knew it or not. And though their names aren’t spe-

cifi cally included, I nevertheless thank them sincerely for the insights, en-couragement, and enthusiasm they imparted. Additionally, I want to ac-knowledge the countless dedicated people who helped me at these historical societies and libraries: Douglas County (Nevada) Historical Society; Knox College Library, Special Collections and Archives; Galesburg Public Li-brary; Chicago Historical Society; Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh; Histori-cal Society of Western Pennsylvania; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; and the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center.

Specifi cally, I am much indebted to the following people for provid-ing noteworthy anecdotes, information, photographs, and advice: Steve Achard, Norman Anderson, Conrad Buedel, John Buydos, Fred Dahlinger, Larry Feeser, James G. Ferris, Frank Griggs, and Jeff Russell. Norm An-derson, the world’s foremost authority on Ferris wheels and their history, kindly allowed me complete access and copying privileges to his extensive research materials and photographs of Ferris wheels. Jim Ferris, great-great-nephew of George, shared his extensive data bank about the Ferris family. Steve Achard, great-great-nephew of George, and Conrad Buedel shared re-search material from their book about the Dangbergs (the family of Maggie Ferris Dangberg, George’s older sister). On my behalf, Larry Fesser spent time researching the Ferris Archives at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. To all of them I say, Thank you very, very much.

I am additionally indebted to Norman Anderson for composing the Foreword. My lasting gratefulness is also extended to Barbara McNichol for her outstanding assistance with the editing of Circles in the Sky. I deeply appreciate that Norm, Jim, and Steve kindly read my fi nal draft, pointed out errors, and offered comments. Any mistakes found in this book, how-ever, are mine alone.

Finally, a time-consuming endeavor such as this could not have been done without the full support and encouragement of my family. I’m deeply

xx CIRCLES IN THE SKY

thankful to each of them—my wife Evelyn, and our children Nancy, Susan (and her husband George), and David (and his wife Kathy).

The quote about Ferris at the beginning of Chapter One is courtesy of the Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsylvania from its 2006 book Cel-ebrating 125 Years of Engineering by Tim Palucka and Sherie Mershon. I sincerely thank them for allowing me to use it.

Richard G. Weingardt, P.E., Dist.M.ASCE

CHAPTER ONE

Legendary He Was

There is a man whose name has become a household word throughout the nations of the earth. Every man, woman and child knows him; the savages from darkest Dahoney and the naked tribes from the South Sea Islands; the Eskimos from the Polar Sea and the Arabs from the Nubian Desert are telling to their friends at home the wonderful story of the great wheel on the Midway Plaisance of the Columbian Fair. And the man who has designed, constructed, erected and operated this revolving wonder is G.W.G. Ferris of Pittsburgh.

—Max J. Becker, 1893 president of the Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsylvania

In the last decade of the nineteenth century, 30-some years after the most devastating war in its history, the United States was eager to showcase

the progress it had made since its reunifi cation and highlight its “can-do” spirit and ingenuity, including its architectural, engineering, and techno-logical talents. A World’s Fair of epic proportions, in conjunction with the quadricentennial of Christopher Columbus discovering America, would be a good way to do it.

After losing a staggering number of its promising youth and experi-enced leaders in the Civil War (1861–1864), the United States felt com-pelled to show the international community that its infrastructure and commerce had indeed recovered, along with its population, which was rapidly approaching 70 million. Among its numbers were notable world-class civil engineers responsible for many contemporary, record-setting en-gineering feats using the new structural material, steel. These feats included the world’s fi rst skyscraper, the longest suspension bridge, and the largest arched-truss bridge.

LEGENDARY HE WAS 1

2 CIRCLES IN THE SKY

In the summer of 1893, something else built on U.S. soil, using structural steel, warranted attention—some-thing even more intriguing than those three engineering wonders. It was a towering, giant vertical wheel, resem-bling a spider web, circling in the skies of Chicago, Illi-nois. This engineering marvel completely captured the imagination of the international community and made headlines everywhere. Several stories taller than any exist-ing American building, the wheel carried adventure-seek-ing passengers to the dizzying height of 264 feet. It pro-vided them with panoramic views never before possible.

When Chicago was selected over New York City and St. Louis as the location for America’s World’s Fair in 1893—the Columbian Exposition—Chicagoans vowed to make it the most astonishing and successful international event ever. So boastful were local support-ers that this would be accomplished, New York report-ers began calling Chicago “the Windy City,” a nickname that remains today. (It has nothing to do with the winds howling off Lake Michigan.)

In the end, the Chicago Exposition did overshadow all previous World’s Fairs, even the dazzling 1889 Frenchaffair in Paris, which produced the Eiffel Tower—the

new symbol of that city. The Columbian Exposition’s giant passenger wheel, Chicago’s answer to the Eiffel Tower and the star of its show, was the brainchild of one of the most mysterious and fascinating characters in American history—George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., a dashing young civil engineer based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Tall, slim, dark, and movie-star handsome, Ferris commanded attention wherever he went, even before he became an international fi gure.

The 1890s were a time in America when men and women such as Fer-ris could capture public attention and become legends. Not yet on the scene were superstar entertainers and sports heroes like Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey, or adventurers like Charles Lindbergh and Robert Scott. During the nineteenth century, the media focused on “movers and shakers” and empire-builders like California’s Leland Stanford, inventors like New Jer-sey’s Thomas Edison, industrialists like Pennsylvania’s Andrew Carnegie, and especially those who could build impressive structures and machines.

On April 25, 1890, President Benjamin Harrison signed into federal law an act confi rming the choice of Chicago over New York, St. Louis, and other fi nalists. The act designated the opening date of America’s interna-tional exposition as May 1, 1893. That would allow New York, St. Louis, and other U.S. cities to hold their own events, if they wanted, to celebrate the actual date of Columbus’s landing in the Western Hemisphere on Oc-tober 12, 1492. The act established that the Illinois event, in addition to celebrating this 400th anniversary, would be an “International Exhibition

George W. G. Ferris, Jr. Offi cial photograph taken for the Chicago World’s Fair pamphlet describing the Ferris Wheel. Ferris was 34 years old.

Source: Courtesy of Douglas County Historical Society.

LEGENDARY HE WAS 3

of arts, industries, manufacturers and the products of the soil, mine and sea” (Anderson 1986).

As the site for this grand celebration, Chicago chose Jackson Park, a marshy tract of land on the edge of Lake Michigan. Plans called for its 660-plus acres to be transformed into an epic park featuring an ideal city with the most up-to-date as well as classical works of architecture that U.S. architects could design. Time and money were too short to construct build-ings using marble and stone, so their façades were made of metal mesh cov-ered with stucco, colored white. It produced such a stunning appearance that the Fair’s short-term ideal city instantly became known as the “White City.” Next to it, as part of the Exposition operation, was a long, narrow strip of land called the Midway Plaisance, set aside for privately operated amusements and exhibits.

Two years before the Fair’s opening, the organizers of the Columbian Exposition openly expressed concern that no great engineering marvel was in the works for their rapidly approaching event. Yes, they were pleased with the pretentious edifi ces the country’s architects were designing, but were highly disappointed that American engineers hadn’t come up with anything novel to equal Paris’s Eiffel Tower. After all, the exposed metal-frame structure of the 1889 International Exhibition held in Paris repre-sented a daring structural engineering triumph in a class by itself.

Architect Daniel H. Burnham (1846–1912), head of the Chicago Expo-sition Committee and instrumental in determining the direction of the Fair’s showcase projects, spared no feelings when he spoke at a large gathering of engineers at an engineering-sponsored luncheon during the Exposition’s planning and early construction phase. Burnham, who had a favorite catch phrase, “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s minds,” told the group that nothing the nation’s engineers had proposed was even close to acceptable; nothing they suggested would “meet the expectations of the people” (Larson 2003).

Indeed, the Chicago Exposition Committee was not interested in mere bigness or tallness. They had already turned down two major tower pro-posals, even one by Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (1832–1923) himself, to build a structure substantially taller than Paris’s 984-foot tower. To the commit-tee, a tower would not fi t the bill, even if it would end up setting the record as the tallest structure in the world. It would still be an embellished copy of what the Europeans had already done. Only a true engineering break-through that represented America’s “can-do” spirit and its emergence as a world-class nation with vision would be acceptable. America’s pride was at stake. Was there no American engineer capable of coming up with some-thing sensational?

Burnham’s blunt remarks and haughty attitude stunned the engineers in the audience. Many felt unsettled, among them 33-year-old George Fer-ris. At the time, he headed two successful engineering fi rms in Pittsburgh, with branch offi ces in metropolises like New York and Chicago, and Ferris was not known as one who made “little plans.” Back in his offi ce, recapping


the events of the meeting, Ferris told his associates, “I was cut to the quick” (Rice 1901).

Ferris immediately began working on a response to Burnham’s challenge. He told Carl Snyder, a reporter for an international magazine, “I turned over every proposition I could think of. On four or fi ve of them I spent consider-able time. What were they? Well, perhaps I’d better not say. [Were they too futuristic?] Any way, none of them were satisfactory” (Snyder 1893).

In due course, Ferris settled on the invention he would present. At an engineering society dinner meeting at a Chicago chop house, he sketched out his plan for his colleagues. He would design and build an enormous, revolving, steel tension wheel—a magical device resembling a giant bicycle wheel. It would carry people to breathtaking heights and yet be absolutely safe, even in hurricane-level winds. It would be the greatest wheel ever built, perhaps even the Eighth Wonder of the World.

Said Ferris,

I got out some paper and began sketching it out. I fi xed the size, determined the construction, the number of cars we would run, the number of people it would hold, what we would charge, the plan of stopping six times during the fi rst revolution for loading, and then making a complete turn. In short, before the dinner was over, I had sketched out almost the entire detail, and my plan never varied an item from that day on. The wheel stands in the Plaisance at this moment as it stood before me then. (Snyder 1893)

With this design, Ferris pushed the envelope on how high moving struc-tures could be built. His steel wheel, which actually consisted of two separate, identical wheel elements connected by a network of struts and angles, had an outside diameter of 250 feet and was more than 20 stories tall. The entire apparatus was raised 15 feet above the ground and was supported on top of two 140-foot-tall steel towers. These were connected by a 45-foot-long axle, the largest single piece of forged steel in the world at the time.

Thirty-six railroad-sized passenger cars or cabins with plush, crushed-velvet interiors were hung between the two wheel elements. Each car held 60 people. Fully loaded, the 1,200-ton Ferris Wheel, which was powered by a 1,000-horsepower reversible engine, could handle more than 2,000 people at once. Every passenger would receive a two-revolution, 20-minute ride for 50 cents.

At fi rst, people—including prominent engineers—thought Ferris’s gi-ant-wheel proposal for such a monstrous people-carrying mechanism was outrageous. He must be a wild man, especially when he stated he could de-sign, fi nance, and build the huge contraption in the few remaining months before the Exposition’s opening. Some called him “the man with wheels in his head” (Anderson 1986).

Americans were familiar and comfortable with bicycle wheels (popular circular tension-spoke devices) but a tension wheel the size Ferris developed

LEGENDARY HE WAS 5

had never been built and made operational. Its narrow spokes, extremely tiny in cross section compared to the bulky ones needed for compression wheels, struck many as being too fragile. Reported Snyder, “His brother engineers said it could not be built and be a success. When it revolved, it would become an ellipse. Besides, there was no way of revolving such an enormous mass, any-way. There were objections in multiple. In interest of his long and hard-earned reputation, they advised him to let the project alone” (Snyder 1893).

However, the tenacious young engineer from Pittsburgh did not get dis-couraged. He continued working on the presentation he would make to Burnham’s committee. It would not be the fi rst passenger wheel submittal the committee had seen. Others had been rejected outright, mainly for being too “carnival-looking” and not in keeping with the dignity and elegance of the Exposition’s White City motif.

One of these cast-aside proposals was for an enormous Dutch windmill-looking structure with a rotating wheel cantilevered off its side. Another was for a large, bulky wheel proposed by the owner of two 50-foot-tall wooden compression wheels newly erected at amusement parks along the Atlantic Coast. Neither of these offered new engineering or technology—nothing to capture the public’s imagination or impress the international community, and nothing that would outshine the Eiffel Tower.

On the other hand, the circulating-wheel proposal Ferris made in June, 1892 had possibilities. The Exposition Committee approved his scheme, but not without considerable debate. Then, the next day, it promptly with-drew its approval.

Suddenly, the Chicago Exposition was nowhere in its quest to outdo the French and their famous Eiffel Tower. The ever-optimistic Ferris, how-ever, would not call it quits. That was not his makeup. Said two of his part-ners and long-time friends, Gustave Kaufman and David McNaugher, “He was always bright, hopeful and full of anticipation of good results from all the ventures he had at hand. These feelings he could always impart to whomever he addressed in a most wonderful degree, and therein lay the key to his success” (Kaufman 1897).

After the committee’s repeal of his concession to build his giant wheel, Ferris returned to his offi ce and invested more time and personal money into refi ning his drawings and details. He also intensifi ed his efforts to secure fund-ing sources for his ambitious venture. He contacted dozens of manufacturers and suppliers needed to furnish the multitude of parts and materials required. His next proposal to Burnham’s committee would be more than dazzling.

Although the Chicago Fair’s building committee had created many demands and restrictions for exhibits on its Midway Plaisance, it had no funds to build them, having used what money it had constructing the White City’s architectural monuments. Unlike what transpired at the 1889 Inter-national Exhibition in Paris (used as the guide for what a world-class event should be), Chicago had neither the means for building major exhibits nor adequate time for erecting them. When designing and constructing his cel-ebrated structure, Eiffel had received public funding and was given three years to erect it. For the Columbian Exposition, however, those who came


up with the approved response to the Eiffel Tower had to raise their own funds and build it, not in years, but in months.

The Chicago Fair’s committee continued to idle away its time on the issue. Finally, in late November 1892, Ferris resubmitted his plans with a complete fi nancing package included. He had another encounter with Burn-ham, this time about the wheel’s design and safety. The architect told the engineer, “Your wheel is so fl imsy it will collapse, and even if it doesn’t, the public will be afraid to ride in it.” Ferris replied, “You are an architect, sir, I am an engineer. The spokes may seem fl imsy, but they are more than strong enough.” He then closed with, “I feel that no man should prejudge another man’s idea unless he knows what he’s talking about” (Jones 1984).

On December 16, 1892, just four and a half months before the Exposi-tion was to open, Burnham’s committee fi nally granted Ferris the concession to build his monster structure. It was given the most prominent position on the Plaisance, right next to the “Streets of Cairo” where belly-dancer Little Egypt would perform and shock modest spectators. Also nearby, but outside the fair grounds, would be Buffalo Bill Cody’s popular Wild West Show, back in America after a highly successful tour in Europe.

* * *

Born in the Midwest to a well-established family with links to the Daugh-ters of the American Revolution, and raised on a ranch in the West, Ferris attended high school in California and then college in New York. After receiving a degree in civil engineering, he was employed in the railroad and coal industries, working on bridges, tunnels, and trestle structures in Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. In 1885, at age 26, he founded his own engineering fi rm in Pittsburgh. One year later, he married Margaret Ann Beatty of Canton, Ohio, and they moved into a fashionable part of Pittsburgh near his offi ce. Both had gregarious, forward-looking personalities and their marriage appeared to be a match made in heaven.

Commenting on Ferris’s nature, Kaufman and McNaugher said,

His relations with all with whom he came in contact were at all times cordial and pleasant on account of his affable and gentlemanly manners. He was eminently engaging and social, and he had a keen sense of the ludicrous. In all gath-erings he at once became the center of attention, having a ready command of language and a constant fund of amusing anecdotes. He was an optimist, convinced that he would ulti-mately overcome any troubles. Even in the darkest times, he was ever looking for the sunshine to come. (Kaufman 1897)

After his 1893 interview with Ferris, Snyder reported,

Physically, Mr. Ferris has little of the inventor type. The man you meet is a man of affairs, tall, well-proportioned

LEGENDARY HE WAS 7

and well set out. He greets you easily, his demeanor is quiet, his tones low. For a Western man, he is rather fas-tidious in his dress. In him you detect a little of the West-ern angularity, perhaps; for the rest, that bearing of easy confi dence and mild cynicism which success always brings. Perhaps his most notable characteristic is a steel blue eye of remarkable depth and clarity. Withal there is about him something of that naïve, almost boyish candor that is such a striking characteristic of [Thomas] Edison. His conversa-tion is fascinating. In a quiet sentence he opens unexpected vistas, or turns the corner upon an idea so novel that it is startling. He speaks in evenly modulated tone, fl uently, and often epigrammatically. After listening to his easy, unaffected talk, brilliant without effort for an hour, one feels he is in the presence of a man surcharged, teeming with ideas, who is destined to play an important role in the industrial and mechanical advancement of his country. (Snyder 1893)

In addition to the advances being made in structural materials and civil engineering, Ferris told Snyder, “The greatest practical progress of the near future will be comprised within the expansion of the use of electricity. Modern life will be absolutely revolutionized as far as its practical everyday work is concerned within the coming ten years. And electricity largely will accomplish it. So far as practical use is concerned, we had merely begun to employ electrical power” (Snyder 1893). He also captivated the reporter with his ideas about the potential of tension structures and how there was no limit to how large a steel tension wheel could be built.

If anyone could pull off the miracle of building a mechanical steel structure the size and complexity of the one needed to anchor the Midway Plaisance in the short time allowed, it was George W. G. Ferris. No other person in America, not even France’s great Gustave Eiffel, had the where-withal to build anything of that magnitude so quickly. Actually, even Ferris couldn’t do it in the allotted four and a half months, not during one of Chi-cago’s coldest winter-springs on record. It took him six months.

Ferris had many advantages as a result of his having been a success-ful consulting engineer in Pittsburgh for so long. He had connections with most major manufacturers, fabricators, and suppliers of steel products in the country. He also had a highly respected reputation in the industry. He knew the ins and outs of America’s rapidly emerging steel business, and got projects built on time and within budget. Plus, he knew whom to go to and how to raise money, and whom to bring onboard as investors and offi cers in the two new companies he specifi cally formed to build and op-erate the Wheel.

In getting his design built in so short a time and well below its initially proposed $400,000 budget (the equivalent of $9 million in 2009 dollars), Ferris displayed an inventive mind and superb engineering expertise. He


also had an uncanny understanding of how to organize, fi nance, build, and operate megaprojects in trying times. In 1893, the United States was in the throes of a paralyzing depression, which made his accomplishment even more impressive—so impressive, in fact, that it captured the attention of the U.S. War Department. In an offi cial letter to the Ferris Wheel Company after Ferris died, Gen. Nelson A. Miles, Commanding U.S. Army, Presi-dent Board of Ordnance and Fortifi cation, requested detailed information concerning how Ferris could do what he did. Luther Rice, still with the Wheel Company at the time, responded in detail to the general’s questions about “the remarkably short time required for the construction and erec-tion of this huge structure [the Ferris Wheel]” compared to Army construc-tion projects (Letter from Miles’s offi ce to L. V. Rice at Ferris Wheel Com-pany, Jan. 19, 1897, Washington, D.C.). Whether the Army ever used any of Rice’s information or changed any of its procedures is not recorded.

When the Ferris Wheel opened in June, 1893, members of the Chicago Fair’s committee gushed with compliments during festivities that included bands playing and fl ags fl ying. Typical were comments made by Maj. Moses P. Handy, who said, “We knew that what Mr. Ferris proposed he would carry out. He has done so. The wheel is here. It will be to the World’s Co-lumbian Exposition what the Eiffel Tower was to the Paris exposition, and it will be more. Already it has excited the interest of professional men and the country over” (CT 1893a).

Many notables took the fi rst ride. Several of them, though, were highly apprehensive about being so far above the ground. Those in the lead car were quickly put at ease by the calm of Ferris and his personable young wife. A few days earlier, prior to the offi cial opening, she had also calmed the nerves of several dozen members of the media. At the apex of the re-porters’ fi rst ride, with their car gently swaying 264 feet above earth, glasses of champagne were passed around and Margaret Ann Ferris stood on a chair. A newspaper account said, “Looking wonderfully pretty in a dainty gown of black trimmed in gold, she raised her glass to the others in the car and gave a toast. [A beaming Mrs. Ferris cheered,] ‘To the health of my husband and the success of the Ferris Wheel’” (PCG 1893). Her gesture relieved all tensions.

Although short-lived, Ferris’s incredible Wheel was considered by many to be much more spectacular than the Eiffel Tower in calling the public’s at-tention to the advancements of engineering and structural materials. Along with America’s 1874 Eads Bridge in St. Louis, the 1883 Brooklyn Bridge in New York, and the 1885 Home Insurance Building skyscraper in Chicago, it showcased how important steel would be in constructing increasingly bigger facilities and complex structures. The U.S. engineering community led in its use, making it a force to be reckoned with worldwide.

Over the years, the infl uence of Ferris’s engineering and entertainment marvel on the world has been exemplifi ed by the countless number of Ferris wheels and other moving entertainment devices replicated around the globe. No fair or carnival seems complete without a moving passenger wheel, and many theme parks have them as their main attractions or anchors.

LEGENDARY HE WAS 9

Ferris had said it would have been possible to build a revolving wheel more than 500 feet tall using the tension principle. However, he said,

It would have cost fi ve times what the present wheel did and would have demonstrated nothing more from an en-gineering standpoint. The Ferris Wheel is many times the size of any known tension wheel. Having made such an ad-vance in engineering as this, anything bigger would simply have abruptly increased the expense without adding any material point. There would have been no more point in a larger wheel than in copying Eiffel and building a tower 200 feet taller than his. I think that the tension wheel, now that its capabilities have been demonstrated, will in the fu-ture be generally employed. (Snyder 1893)

That steel tension wheels could easily reach the 500-foot range, as pre-dicted by the visionary Ferris, was confi rmed in the spring of 2000. That’s when the 443-foot-tall London Eye, revolving high above the Thames River, opened. It quickly became one of the top-ranked tourist attractions in London, along with Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. In 2008, an even taller Ferris wheel opened in the Far East, the 541-foot-tall Singapore Flyer. However, it will not hold the world title for long. China plans to begin operating the Beijing Great Wheel in 2009 or 2010, which will claim the record at a height of 682 feet—two and a half times taller than the original Ferris Wheel. All three towering, modern-day record-holders are tension-wheel structures based on concepts developed by Ferris and his engineers in the nineteenth century.

Ferris gained so much fame with his Chicago Wheel that its notoriety overshadowed the rest of his engineering accomplishments. History remem-bers him only for that and not for his many other civil engineering accom-plishments. Yet long before the Columbian Exposition, he was involved with numerous record-setting projects and the advancement of the use of steel in all structures. Ferris told Snyder, “The fi rm of which I’m the head looks after or superintends the construction directly of a good number of the steel bridges of the U.S., and it is in the direction of steel bridge con-struction that my work has been almost exclusively” (Snyder 1893).

When he made these remarks, Ferris was engaged in the design of a gigantic 1,800-foot-long, 60-foot-wide steel cantilever bridge across the Ohio River at Cincinnati, Ohio, next to the one he and Kaufman were the engineers-of-record on in 1891. The new structure would be the second longest cantilever in the world and, because of its enormous size, one of the greatest bridges of its type ever built.

The reality of the matter, though, is that these non-wheel projects, no matter how outstanding, will always take second place in his portfolio of engineering works. It was as the builder of one of the most imaginative creations of the nineteenth century—the imposing Ferris Wheel—that Fer-ris became a legend in his own time. Nothing will change that, not even the


secrets to be revealed herein. But who was the man really? Where did he and his family come from? And who were his role models and mentors?

Looking back through six generations, to when the fi rst Ferris set foot on American soil, records reveal a long list of strong-willed, capable, and pioneering men and women—a solid bloodline to build on, for sure. Those who had great infl uence on Ferris’s growth and outcome were his father and possibly his grandfather, though Ferris was only a child when his grandfa-ther passed away. As one of the original founders of both Knox College and the town of Galesburg, Illinois, where the college was located and where Ferris was born, grandfather Ferris was greatly admired as the family’s pa-triarch and a revered community leader.

Almost as infl uential as his father was a much older brother-in-law, Frederick Dangberg, one of Nevada’s largest landowners and wealthiest early settlers. He was the prototype, if ever there was one, for Ben Cart-wright, the hero of the Bonanza television series. Many powerful and suc-cessful people, including certain business associates, clients, and respected fellow engineers and professors, infl uenced the direction of Ferris’s career, as did certain events. This volume will unveil how these diverse infl uences altered or contributed to Ferris’s life.

This is his story—how George Ferris, against all odds, became the man who built the amazing Ferris Wheel of 1893. And how it consumed him.

WESTWARD TO THE COLONIES 11

CHAPTER TWO

Westward to the Colonies

Wherever we are, it is but a stage on the way to somewhere else, and whatever we do, how-ever well we do it, it is only a preparation to do something else that shall be different.

—Robert Louis Stevenson

When the eager, young 24-year-old Englishman and his bride stepped off the ship at Boston Harbor in 1634, they were noticed. The attractive

pair had about them an air of determination and destiny, if not importance. Tall and redheaded, he was called Jeffrey and she Mary. People whispered she was of noble birth and had married against the wishes of her family.

They had arrived from Leicester, England, where he allegedly de-scended from the House of Feriers (Ferrerr, Fereis, or Ferris), the progeni-tor of which in England was Henry de Feriers, son of Guillaume (William) de Feriers, the Earl of Derby, who had received from William the Con-queror sizable grants of land in Staffordshire, Derbyshire, and Leicester-shire as reward for his role in the Battle of Hastings. The new arrivals, however, had not inherited or brought with them any family wealth, if any really existed.

To keen observers, the young couple seemed comfortable in their new surroundings and with their decision to leave their concerns back in England. In their move to “the colonies,” they looked forward to all the opportunities there rather than ever returning to the place of their births. In their rugged, newly adopted homeland that would become known as the United States of America, they raised fi ve sturdy children—John, Peter, Joseph, Mary, and James. Thus began one of America’s most far-reaching and extensive fami-lies, one branch of which, seven generations later, would include the interna-tionally famous George “Ferris Wheel” Ferris. Jeffrey’s youngest son James (1642–1726) was a direct ancestor of the famous engineer.


By the time Jeffrey Ferris arrived in the sparsely inhabited English col-ony on the Atlantic seaboard, the Plymouth Rock Pilgrims had been there for 14 years. The latter had celebrated several Thanksgivings with the land’s Indian natives and were steadily carving out clearings in the forests, build-ing homes, and establishing self-sustaining communities. The pathways and trails linking these communities gradually widened into roads.

These road improvements, along with those for the docks harboring the large ships that were crucial for Atlantic Ocean crossings, were among the most vital infrastructure needs of the colonists. Others were food, po-table water, and shelter—essential for the very survival of these early set-tlers. Ferris and his descendants would quickly become leaders in helping develop these man-made improvements and, in the process, advance the nascent American colonies.

Once settled in Watertown, Massachusetts, Jeffrey established the spell-ing of his family’s American name as “Ferris” and, post-haste, began an un-bridled quest to acquire land, wealth, and respectability. Crucial to that in colonial America was acquiring freeman status, which Ferris accomplished on May 6, 1638.

After a few years in Massachusetts, Ferris moved his growing family to Wethersfi eld, Connecticut. From there, after selling his farm, he moved to Stamford, Connecticut, where, as one of its original colonists, he received ten acres in its fi rst division of land in 1640. In 1656, Ferris was found in Greenwich, Connecticut, one of its fi rst 11 pioneers and stalwart commu-nity leaders. He was realizing his quest to acquire as much property as pos-sible on an ever-increasing basis.

After his fi rst wife Mary died, Ferris married Susannah Lockwood, the widow of Robert Lockwood. He adopted her children, Jonathan and Mary, and cared for them as he did his own. When Susannah passed away, he married his third wife, Judy Burns. In his will dated March 6, 1667, Ferris bequeathed portions of his estate to his wife Judy, son James, son Peter’s three children, son Joseph’s two children, and stepchildren Jonathan and Mary Lockwood.

All of Jeffrey Ferris’s natural children resulted from his fi rst marriage. His youngest, James—the link to the Ferris branch that would migrate to Il-linois and then to Nevada—was the second-generation ancestor of civil en-gineer George’s family. (See the George Ferris Family Tree in Appendix B.) Born to James were Hannah, Mary, Samuel, Nathaniel, and James (the sec-ond). In line with the Ferris family custom established in America, none of them had aversions to civic responsibility or leadership.

James II (1699–1739), the third-generation connection to the Illinois-Nevada Ferris clan, was a steady provider, a solid citizen, and an active participant in Greenwich, Connecticut community affairs. He was a com-missioned offi cer in the militia during America’s colonial period. James II’s children were Mary, Sarah, James (the third), Hannah, and Sylvanus, who was the great-grandfather of George “Ferris Wheel” Ferris and the fourth-generation tie between Jeffrey and the Ferrises of Illinois.


Until the unsettling times before the American Revolution in the late 1700s, Jeffrey Ferris’s offspring stayed along the Eastern seaboard, mainly in Connecticut. That, however, changed once Jeffrey’s great-grandson Syl-vanus, who was born on August 10, 1737, in Greenwich, matured into manhood. When Sylvanus was only two years old, his father James II died. Five years later his mother Mary passed away, leaving him a seven-year-old orphan. He was put under the guardianship of his uncle Samuel, his father’s oldest brother, who raised him with care in his own family.

During the French and Indian War (1754–1763), Sylvanus served with the 9th Regiment on the side of England, an alliance that would change in the next war in which the American colonists would actively partici-pate. Around his twentieth birthday, in August, 1757, Ferris’s regiment was called into service to rescue Fort William Henry from the enemy. Indica-tions are that he performed his duties well and returned home honored and respected.

Once back in Greenwich, Sylvanus returned to civilian life and a more steady, fear-free environment. On September 10, 1761, he married Mary Mead and the pair had nine children—Henry, Mary Ann (“Molly”), Hannah, Sylvanus II (Silvanus), Sarah, Mary Elizabeth, Gideon, James, and Betsy. In keeping with family tradition, their sons were slated to be farmers and land-owners, and their daughters to marry into farming families, all in the area. Silvanus (1773—1861) was George “Ferris Wheel” Ferris’s grandfather.

Sylvanus and Mary lived with their children in their native town, pros-perous and happy for several years, until the outbreak of events leading up to the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). Making no secret of which side he took in the colonialists’ struggle for independence made Syl-vanus and his family, along with many of their neighbors, vulnerable to harassment from the Tories. These supporters and militants sympathetic to King George and England had amassed a sizable contingency in and around Greenwich. With increasing blatancy, they ransacked the property of those supporting the revolution, stealing livestock and destroying crops, fences, and buildings.

The signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, ex-acerbated the situation. Emboldened bands of Tories swarmed places like Greenwich and Stamford, making life miserable and dangerous for the pa-triots in those areas. Also, some Ferris family members themselves were aligned with the Tories, presenting confl icting situations at home.

A half-dozen years into the war and, after an aggressive gang of To-ries (“cowboys,” Sylvanus disgustedly called them) stole his crops, horses, a pair of prized oxen, and more, the 45-year-old patriot fi nally had enough. He decided to get out of the line of fi re and left his home state of Connecti-cut for New York state.

Sylvanus purchased a farm in Westchester County near the hamlet of Lewisboro, four miles south of South Salem and 15 miles as the crow fl ies from Greenwich. On May 28, 1782, Sylvanus and Mary brought with them all six of their living children, ranging in age from 1 to 19. (Their sixth-born


Mary Elizabeth had died as an infant.) Born to the Ferrises after moving to New York were their eighth and ninth children, James and Betsy.

By the war’s end, the Sylvanus’s new homestead was shaping up and on its way to producing bumper crops. Just opposite his farm stood a post of-fi ce and store, which he and his family began operating profi tably. To assist in this, Mary made annual trips on horseback to New York City 50 miles away, her saddlebags fi lled with her own and her neighbors’ knitting and other home-made objects. After selling the items to city vendors, she pur-chased and brought back city-made articles requested by her neighbors and to sell in the Ferris general store.

Their large, spacious, and well-appointed farmhouse served another purpose. To supplement revenue from the farm and store, the Ferrises took in overnight travelers, mostly between New York City and Danbury, Con-necticut, making their homestead one of the fi rst inns in America. Often in need of lodging, President George Washington may have been a frequent guest at their place. (Operated as an inn until 1815, the Sylvanus Ferris Homestead is still standing, beautifully maintained and a designated his-torical structure.)

Sylvanus Ferris was “much respected by his neighbors and friends and was frequently elected to public offi ce” (Booth 1963). He took on his fi rst such position one year after arriving in Lewisboro, as highway commis-sioner for the district. “He was dignifi ed in appearance, an amiable man with dark eyes, tall, straight, clean-shaven with, in his later years, a full head of long white hair” (Booth 1963).

When and if descendants of Sylvanus and Mary look back into family history, the accomplishments of these two trailblazers must be inspiring, and their lessons concerning hard work, thrift, and morality invaluable. They were able to leave their children with all the tools and support they needed to succeed, and the children did.

Ferris, who outlived his wife Mary by 18 months, remained spry until his death at age 86 on January 12, 1824. By then, James Monroe was in his second term as the fi fth president of the United States. Sylvanus had lived through the actions of four others—Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jef-ferson, and James Madison. He had seen the colonies grow from a popu-lation of less than 1 million into a promising nation of 12 million or so people. He survived two major wars with his mother country, England—the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. He and his neighbors realized how far-reaching the country’s boundaries had become as a result of the early campaigns into America’s western frontier by government-sponsored explorers, including Lewis and Clark, Zebulon Pike, and Stephen Long.

Closer to home, as a former highway commissioner Sylvanus under-stood the impact the proposed Erie Canal through New York would have on the state, the rest of the nation, and the Western movement. In its time, it was the country’s most comprehensive inland waterway project. Had it been completed earlier than it was, it would have made visiting and send-ing supplies to and from his son Silvanus and his family, homesteading near Norway, New York, more convenient and appealing.


Early on, Sylvanus’s second son, Silvanus (born March 15, 1773, the grandfather of “Ferris Wheel” George) exhibited restlessness and strong signs of a pioneering spirit. He also showed a sound business sense and, in later years, strong empire-building tendencies surfaced, as well.

In 1797, when he was 24, Silvanus purchased a 110-acre farm for $6 an acre, located 150 miles upstate from Lewisboro. It was near Norway, New York, in Herkimer County, just southwest of the present-day Adirondack Mountains Park. Most of the area around his place was wild and unsettled. On a level clearing in the woods, amid the farm’s rugged, rocky terrain, he erected a log cabin. He then returned home to Lewisboro to gather supplies and equipment, and to continue courting the young woman of his dreams, Sally Maria Olmsted.

The Olmsteds had come from England and were ex-tensively spread throughout Connecticut and New York by the time Sally met Silvanus. Within the Olmsted fam-ily tree were two descendants who would intricately in-terface with her direct offspring in the later 1800s: Fred-erick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) and Chauncey Norman Noteware (1825–1910). Olmsted was the celebrated de-signer/planner of Central Park in New York City as well as the property around the Vanderbilts’s palatial manor, Biltmore Estate, near Asheville, North Carolina, and the fairgrounds for the Chicago World Exposition in 1893, where George Jr.’s history-making wheel was erected. Noteware, the fi rst Nevada secretary of state, greatly infl uenced where George Ferris’s family terminated its westward migration in the 1860s and where the builder of the Ferris Wheel spent his growing-up years.

According to an April 1, 1890, article in the Norway Tidings, Sally Ol-msted had a strong constitution, worked hard, and had high morals. “She was a model woman for pioneer life” (NT 1890). Sally was also deeply religious and the second cousin of George Washington Gale (1789–1861), an intense, highly driven, itinerant Presbyterian minister whose territory in-cluded Herkimer County in the early 1800s.

Sally and Silvanus married on March 15, 1798, ten days after his twen-ty-fi fth birthday. They said goodbye to their families and headed northwest. All they took with them would be hauled in a two-wheeled cart pulled by a less-than-young horse. Once back at the undeveloped farm in Norway, they cleared a patch of forested land around their cabin and planted a crop of corn and vegetables, and a small orchard. Each year, they cultivated more and more property and began making good money off their crops, saving large amounts of their earnings.

Their fi rst child, Silvanus Western, was born in 1799 in their three-year-old log cabin. The oldest uncle of George Ferris, he was always called Western, never Silvanus. The Ferris’s next three children, Nathan Olmsted,

Silvanus Ferris. George’s grand-father.

Source: Courtesy of Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois.


Sally Maria, and Timothy Harvey, were born there as well, though their daughter Sally died before her fi rst birthday. By the time their fi fth child, William Mead, arrived in 1807, the family was prospering and had moved out of the cabin into a fi ne house.

Silvanus was always loyal to the Presbyterian church. As his fortunes grew, so did his contributions to it. “In 1813, when the Norway Presbyte-rian Church was built, he gave $150. Later he built a chapel on the state road east of Norway. In Russia, New York, he erected a chapel for the Presbyterians near the old Russian Union Church, where he was a longtime trustee” (Ferris 2006).

As time wore on and they learned to maximize farming efforts on the homestead’s thin, rocky soil, Silvanus began raising dairy cows, eventually establishing a large cheese manufacturing operation. He also bought the cattle, pork, butter, and cheese his neighbors produced, taking them to lu-crative markets on the East Coast. “He gave northern New York State its early reputation for good cheddar” (Calkins 1937). His business in this line increased to such an extent that Ferris formed a partnership in 1816 with Robert Nesbit, known as “the old Quaker cheese buyer.” The partnership handled most of the farm produce in the Norway area until it was dissolved in 1830.

By the time the Ferris-Nesbit company was formed, the Ferris household had added three more children, Henry, Laura, and Harriet Newell. One year later, in 1817, Sally was pleased to learn that one of her ad-mired cousins, 28-year-old George W. Gale, was li-censed to preach by Hudson Presbytery at Fishkill, New York. Gale was assigned to be a missionary in settle-ments along the southern shore of Lake Ontario and eastward. Although a small, slightly built, often sickly man, he was “graceful, dignifi ed, and even command-ing, with regular features expressing a pensive thought-fulness” (Calkins 1937).

When Rev. Gale made it to Norway, or the Ferrises made it to where he might be preaching, he created a favorable impression on them. Silvanus, in particular, grew to admire and like him almost as much as Sally did. Even though Gale lacked the qualities of a leader, he “was gifted with the powers of persuasion that won converts in his revivals. He was narrow and intoler-ant in religion, but gracious in social intercourse, a dreamer, somewhat visionary” (Calkins 1937).

When Silvanus and Sally’s fi nal child, their sixth son, was born on May 14, 1818, they named him George Washington Gale Ferris, after Rev. Gale. The gesture greatly touched Gale, who sent a warm and gra-cious note to the Ferrises. Seventy-fi ve years later, when this young George had become George Ferris, Sr. and

Rev. George Washington Gale, the instigator of Galesburg, Illinois, co-founder of Knox College, and namesake for George W. G. Ferris, Sr., who passed the name on to his youngest son, George W. G. “Ferris Wheel” Ferris, Jr.



was being interviewed by a reporter for the Galesburg Evening Mail about his son’s great wheel at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, among other things, George Sr. brought up this gesture. He stated, “I have in my possession a letter that Mr. Gale wrote my mother thanking her for naming me after him and I deem it a keepsake and curiosity, the latter because of the envelope and the 25-cent stamp of those days” (GEM 1893).

While Silvanus Ferris was fi ne-tuning his farming operations and ex-panding his enterprises, the construction of the 365-mile Erie Canal was underway a short distance to the south. It was America’s fi rst major east-west transportation venture. In 1819, its initial 15-mile section opened be-tween Rome and Utica, New York, 12 miles southwest of the Ferris farm. In charge of its design and construction was local surveyor-turned-engineer, Benjamin Wright (1770–1842), whose family resided in the area; they were farmers just like the Ferrises.

With Wright’s encouragement, many farmhands along the canal route found lucrative part-time and year-round construction jobs on the Erie Canal. Prominent on Wright’s main engineering team was one of his as-sistant chief engineers, John B. Jervis (1795–1885). Like Wright, he was a long-time resident of the Rome-Norway-Utica area. As chief engineer for the Erie project, and because Wright trained so many young men like Jervis as civil engineers, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) named Wright the “Father of American Civil Engineering” in 1969.

Jervis employed as an aid his younger brother, Timothy Jervis, who was around the same age as Silvanus’s oldest boys. In the 1830s, Timothy worked as a surveyor around Rome and Norway. There, he became well acquainted with its prominent citizens, including the Ferrises. He was also one of three men to travel to the Midwest and scout land for a scheme the ever-busy Rev. Gale was concocting.

Using the profi ts of his many operations, Silvanus invested in real es-tate—from small parcels up to large farms. His early farm purchases in-cluded the 100-acre Cardman farm in 1816, the 170-acre Thayer farm in 1817, and the 160-acre Comstock farm in 1821. The going price averaged $17 an acre. By 1824, the same year his father died, Silvanus was the larg-est landowner and biggest taxpayer around.

When the Erie Canal offi cially opened on November 4, 1825, a state-wide Grand Celebration culminated in successive cannon shots along its full length. The sequence of blasts, which took 90 minutes to travel from Buffalo to New York City, could be heard from several Ferris farms near the Utica section of the canal.

In 1829, Silvanus moved onto a large farm he had purchased from the Wright family. It was on the state road midway between Russia and Pros-pect, New York. Because it was in his blood to make things better than he found them (and quite possibly because, at age 56, this could be his fi nal home), he invested considerable money improving the property, modern-izing its house, and building an enormous barn.

Two years after settling on the former Wright place, Silvanus’s and Sally’s 20-year-old daughter Laura died. Rev. Gale, making more frequent


trips through the area because he was teaching at Oneida College only a short day’s horseback ride away, provided comfort and spiritual guidance. Gale encouraged everyone to look forward amid their sorrow. With faith in God, he said, golden opportunities would always come their way. Silvanus, though concurring somewhat, believed the world held many opportunities but that hard work was the way to make the most of them.

A 1890 Norway Tidings article recounting Silvanus Ferris’s story reported,

Silvanus was clear headed, sagacious and possessed a high order of business talent. Success seemed to attend to all his movements. As a prosperous dairy farmer, he accumulated what then was regarded as a very large fortune. His indus-try and thrift were almost proverbial in his neighborhood and his enterprise astonishing for those times. His large family was carefully reared and well educated for their day. Staunch Presbyterians, he and his wife inculcated in their children the habits of industry, economy and moral-ity. (NT 1890)

Even Farther WestRev. Gale founded the Oneida Institute of Science and Technology at Whitesboro, New York, in 1826. After its success, he started making granderplans. Oneida was a manual labor college where students paid for their in-struction by working on the school’s farm and/or in its shops. Rev. Gale be-lieved something similar, but larger, was needed. Such an operation would be highly successful farther west, somewhere in the developing Midwest.

So in 1834, while circulating among leaders in the parishes he fre-quented, he unveiled his plans for founding, on the frontier, not only a major college with high religious standards but also a completely new town with similar values. Once he had enough people convinced his vision held promise, he formed a company and backers subscribed. On May 6, 1835, at an offi cial subscribers meeting in Rome, a scouting party was sent out to investigate sites in Illinois and Indiana. A key member of the party was Timothy Jervis, the younger brother of John B. Jervis of Erie Canal fame, and who by then had become a respected local surveyor/civil engineer well known to established landowners like the Ferrises. Jervis was contemplating leaving his profession and becoming a Presbyterian minister, so the scouting assignment came at a good time and fi t him well.

When the party returned with reports that favored Illinois over Indi-ana, another formal meeting of the plan’s subscribers was called to prepare for the next step, the selection and purchase of the right property. This time, one of the region’s most prominent, respected, and fi nancially savvy citizens—Silvanus Ferris—was in attendance. The company’s initial con-


cept called for purchasing a whole township (36 sections or square miles, one section or square mile containing 640 acres) at the going government rate of $1.25 an acre.

Because subscriptions and startup monies were slow coming in, they reduced the program to 20 sections or 12,800 acres. About 50 families had signed up for Gale’s grand and noble plan, but most needed to fi rst sell their farms to come up with their money. Silvanus, though, had ready cash and/or could get money by taking out a loan on his signature alone. The enterprise needed more than his fi nancial wherewithal and strength, however. The whole plan was in jeopardy and more than a few subscrib-ers became discouraged or disillusioned. But when they learned that Ferris was onboard (wealthy beyond belief and 62 years old—not an age when a man abandons comfortable surroundings for the risks and hardships of pioneer life without strong reasons), the venture began to look more posi-tive. As people’s confi dence and enthusiasm returned, more decided to join the scheme.

Why did Silvanus put himself behind the movement? Was it from be-lief in the venture or from his friendship with Rev. Gale? Or was he driven toward empire-building before he passed on? Even his youngest and favor-ite son, George, the eventual father of “Ferris Wheel” George, never really understood Silvanus’s reasons. He told a reporter, “How my father became interested in the project to found a college city has never been related. Mr. Gale did this part of the work very cleverly. He did not at fi rst go to my father, but he interested my mother, who was a very religious woman. She soon became a warm friend of the enterprise, and as she had great infl u-ence with father, who was a prosperous man, you can imagine the rest” (GEM 1893).

For whatever reasons he had for becoming a colonist on the edge of civilization, Silvanus became completely committed. He even persuaded all but one of his grown sons and their families to join him. The old man’s infectious enthusiasm also infl uenced several of his siblings living around Lewisboro to pull up stakes and move west with him. Only his fourth-old-est, Timothy, was against it and would not leave Norway.

In the summer of 1835, a four-member purchasing committee was as-sembled to travel to Illinois and secure the land needed for the venture. Silvanus was its fi nancial leader; joining him were Gale, Thomas Simmons, and Nehemiah West, whose interest in the scheme was surpassed only by Gale’s. Unfortunately, before reaching the “promised land,” Gale took ill and had to return home. The other three went ahead and accomplished their charge.

After purchasing the necessary land required for the colony (including ample acreage for a sizable town and college), the three invested their own money in land for themselves. Ferris also acquired property for Gale and for six of his children, fi ve sons and one daughter. In all, he purchased eight sections for his family, a section of land (640 acres) for each of those who would accompany him, besides buying a liberal amount in his own name. When the transactions were completed, Ferris wrote Gale, “I will only say


we have far exceeded our expectations in almost all respects. The prairie land is very fi ne, and in a healthy country” (Calkins 1937).

Before returning home in November 1835, the three staked out the property for the town and the college, and arranged for the building of log homes for the settlers arriving in the spring of 1836. This fi rst wave of colonists included Silvanus’s youngest son, George. Later followed his four other sons and his daughter, Harriet, who had recently married Dr. James Bunce, who would be the fi rst and only physician to live in the Illinois col-ony for years.

In September, 1836, Silvanus led a group of emigrants from New York’s Herkimer County. They moved by horse-drawn wagons to Buffalo, by boat from there to Detroit, then overland by wagons to Knox County, Illinois, crossing undeveloped prairies and fording rivers.

Before leaving New York state, the group faced open criticism from neighbors who believed that “the enterprise of moving into a wild country almost outside the bounds of civilization was a foolish gamble with the danger of Indians, wild beasts and disease, lack of timber and water, and no value for or potential for sale of crops if they could even be raised” (NT 1890). Nevertheless, they traveled without serious problems and reveled in the excitement and challenge of the unfolding adventure. Also, surely the rich, loamy soil of the undulating prairies of Knox County, Illinois, held more promise for raising bumper crops than did the thin, rocky soil of Her-kimer County, New York. Didn’t it?

TAMING THE PRAIRIE 21

CHAPTER THREE

Taming the Prairie

To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.

—Samuel Johnson

When the fi rst large numbers of pioneers began arriving at the wild, virgin land that Silvanus Ferris and his purchasing group had se-

cured for Rev. George W. Gale’s grand colonization plan, among them was his youngest son, 18-year-old George (later to become the father of “Ferris Wheel” George, and from here onward referred to as George Sr.). In the fall of 1836, he came with the main caravans, some of which included folks from Connecticut and Vermont as well as New York. Because the land they had purchased was undeveloped and without shelter, these fi rst immigrants stayed in temporary log homes that had been built (and were continuing to be built at a feverish pace) at the edge of their future town, Galesburg, in Knox County on the central plains of Illinois. This cluster of transient log cabins was nicknamed “Log City.”

Among these initial early settlers was the future mother of “Ferris Wheel” George, 16-year-old Martha Edgerton Hyde, the adopted daughter of Henry and Mary Wilcox. Martha, the natural daughter of Jabez Perkins and Martha (Edgerton) Hyde, was born on October 24, 1820, in Plattsburg, New York, but had been living in Bridgeport, Vermont with her foster par-ents. Henry Wilcox was not one of the original subscribers to Gale’s plan for founding a college and frontier town, but later became impressed and orga-nized a sizable group from the Green Mountains to join the enterprise.

When the Wilcox party reached its destination, they ceremoniously went to where the center of the new town was slated to be. Recalling the moment in an 1887 letter, Mary Wilcox wrote, “On the morning of the last day in October, 1836, as we reached the spot where this beautiful city [Galesburg] now stands, Uncle Swift stood up in his wagon and called out to us, ‘Here is where the city of Galesburg is to be.’” Being a cynic at


the time, Mary shouted back, “Neither you or I, Uncle, will live to see it” (Gettemy 1935). How wrong she was!

Thrown together in Log City among a few dozen families, George Sr. and Martha, both good-looking teenagers, took notice of each other and became friends under the watchful eye of their stern, religious elders. In due course, their relationship blossomed.

Log homes were not to be allowed in Galesburg and were discouraged on the enterprise’s farms. So, rather than relying on lumber hauled in from surrounding towns, two of Silvanus’s sons, Henry and William, established a wood sawmill along nearby tree-lined Henderson Creek. When Silvanus and his caravan of immigrants arrived in the spring of 1837, Henry and William’s operation, the Ferris Mill, was producing large quantities of quality lumber for home building—just in time, because increasing num-bers of settlers were arriving every month, mostly from the East. Some came overland all the way, others by a combination of land and the Erie Canal and/or the Great Lakes, and some by way of the Ohio and Missis-sippi rivers.

All were hardy pioneers, eager to begin cultivating the broad, wild, fer-tile prairies, break open its rich, loamy soil, and raise bumper crops. The land they encountered was basically fl at and level, but with enough relief—small rivers and streams, gullies and valleys, and an occasional grove of trees—to appeal especially to those not enamored with thick forests and high mountains.

The largest family group settling in the area was the Ferrises, with Sil-vanus as the patriarch. All but one of his living children and several of his siblings took up residency in the new colony. They naturally looked to him for leadership. His large, spacious home hosted many family gatherings and meetings, some for business and others for good times.

Next to Gale, Silvanus was the founder most responsible for the suc-cess of both the town and the college that sprang up, seemingly overnight. He served as an elder in the church, a long-time town leader, and a trustee of the college until just before his death. Said Gale, “To Mr. Ferris, the col-lege owes much of its present prosperity. It could not have been founded without him” (Calkins 1937).

The enterprise’s town was named Galesburg in honor of Rev. Gale, the man who inspired it. The college, referred to as “Prairie College, a liter-ary institution” early on, was called Knox Manual Labor College when it was offi cially put into operation in 1837. The “manual labor” feature was later dropped and the institution became known as Knox College. By 1838, most of the original settlers were out on their farms tilling the soil, or work-ing at businesses or shops in town.

In addition to farming, Silvanus’s fi ve sons, each in his own way, ex-panded their operations to include other money-making activities, includ-ing running a lumber mill, a block-ice distribution company, a grist mill, and a dairy. They raised all sorts of livestock, including dairy cows, and produced cheeses, cultivated orchards, and even made and sold ice cream, a new invention at the time. William, to the ire of the church, even made


wine and hard liquor, something forbidden in the rules of the settlement. He was duly reprimanded for this in-discretion.

The Ferris brothers’ risk-taking urge—always looking out for new opportunities—came from Sil-vanus, no doubt. It was a trait his sons, in their turn, would pass on to their children and their children’s children. Of all Silvanus’s offspring, his second son, Nathan (“Olm”), exhibited this characteristic most strongly. And something else: Olm constantly needed adventure, exotic trips, and unusual things in his life. A close second to him in this regard was George Sr., Silvanus’s youngest and favorite son.

Among other things, Olm introduced to the area different types of crops, including timothy and mustard seed, growing large quantities of it on his farm. He pioneered in sheep raising, bringing the fi rst fl ock (1,500 head from Kentucky) into Knox County in 1842. He was a trailblazer in shipping wool to Chicago, having it woven into cloth, then bringing it back to Galesburg for making clothes locally. He also initiated sending hides to Eastern markets, for sale and to be fashioned into leather. He brought much of the leather home for crafting shoes, boots, and coats.

The daring Olm’s highest quixotic adventure, however, was one proba-bly most discussed at family gatherings. It stemmed from his being among the fi rst in the United States to raise popcorn in quantity; he planted 60 acres of it on his farm. Learning that England was not familiar with this American delicacy, he took along 20 barrels of popping corn when he went abroad with a load of fi ne cattle to sell. He gave a demonstration

Old Main at Knox College. Site of the famous 1858 Lincoln–Douglas debates. It was the last major build-ing planned during Silvanus Fer-ris’s fi nal years as a Knox College trustee. The brick structure refl ected the prosperity the railroad industry brought to Galesburg.

Source: Courtesy of Richard Weingardt Consultants, Inc.


in downtown London, popping his corn before as-tonished Britishers. The stir attracted the attention of Prince Albert, which resulted in an invitation to Wind-sor Castle to pop corn for Queen Victoria.

Ushered into the queen’s presence, “Ferris greeted her majesty with Western simplicity and heartiness, which amused her, as did his demonstration of the corn that turned to snow on application of heat. When the prince asked how such corn might be raised in England, Olmsted replied, ‘By importing a shipload of Illinois soil.’ The outcome of this visit was one of the fairy tales of Galesburg for half a century” (Calkins 1937).

Learning that Olm would accept no gift for himself and fi nding out he had a daughter named Martha in Illinois, Queen Victoria gave him a magnifi cent French wax doll, with real hair, for Martha. This doll was cherished as a famous family treasure for years, until it moldered into tatters.

Ever the explorer, Olm would have one fi nal grand adventure in 1850. He would join the gold rush to Cali-fornia begun by the Forty-Niners one year earlier, tak-ing with him his youngest brother, George Sr. It would be Olm’s last hurrah and he would not return, dead or alive.

* * *

Despite Galesburg’s planned beginnings, its layout didn’t differ much from other prairie towns that had had no such orderly birth. Its streets, mostly running north-south and east-west, followed a typical checkerboard pat-tern centered on a public square. It was different in that it also wrapped around a college campus that was an integral part of the town. But the two main things that set Galesburg apart from other frontier settlements had nothing to do with physical layout. First, the town was founded as a religious community with forbidding rules about all things “sinful,” such as drinking and working on the Sabbath. The second was its stance on slavery.

Gale, the Ferrises, and most of the enterprise’s founders were ardent abolitionists, and highly vocal about it. Within a year after they arrived, Galesburg became home to the fi rst anti-slavery society in the state of Illinois. It was a main stop on the Underground Railroad, giving wel-coming refuge to runaway slaves long before and during the Civil War. Although most of Galesburg’s citizens were proud of the town’s openness in this matter, a few were not. Also, many in neighboring communities were anti- abolitionists. In 1843, Gale and two other town fathers were indicted by a local court for harboring slaves, whom they had hidden in the church belfry and other places. The charges were eventually dropped,

Nathan Olmstead Ferris. George’s wandering and most adventuresome uncle, about whose colorful and in-credible adventures, like his audience with Queen Victoria, many anec-dotes were recounted at Ferris family gatherings.



but not without fi rst making shocking news around the country. What-ever the case might have proved, it did not stop resolute Galesburg abo-litionists like the Ferrises from continuing to hide slaves in their homes and barns.

This strong anti-slavery sentiment prevailed at Knox College as well. Barnabas Root, the first black to receive a college degree in Illi-nois, attended Knox. So did Hiram Revels, the first black to be elected to the U.S. Senate. In 1863, during the Civil War, a dozen black men from Galesburg joined the famed 54th Massachusetts Volunteers under the leadership of Joseph Barquet. Their heroic efforts at the epic battle of Fort Wagner (South Carolina) became the basis for the memorable nineteenth-century publication That Brave Black Regiment and the 1989 movie Glory, starring Matthew Broderick, Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington.

Father of the Ferris Wheel Builder

For his fi rst four years in Galesburg, bachelor George Sr. helped his father, his brothers, and others build structures and get started on their places. He also courted Martha Hyde with increasing passion. Finally, when he was 22 and she was 20, they were married on September 3, 1840. It was Indian summer at its best: wild grasses turned golden and glistening in the sun, trees and bushes taking on fall colors, days of glorious sunshine and cool nights. It was a pleasure to be alive, a wonderful time to begin a new life together as a couple. Silvanus also conveyed to George Sr. the title to one of the large, one-square-mile farms he had earlier purchased. It was in keeping with his custom to give his children farms only after they married.

The happy young couple immediately set up house-keeping on their new farm and, in the spring of 1841, began planting crops. Their place on Monmouth Road was three miles west of town, just a short ride from Knox College where, when they were old enough, their children would attend college. By the 1860s, young George Sr. had greatly increased his landholdings from 640 to more than 1,200 acres. In addition to farming, he owned dairy cows, a dairy, and groves of hardwood trees.

All of George Sr. and Martha’s children were born on this Monmouth Road farm. (The farmland still ex-ists but the house where their children were born and grew up is gone.)

Their fi rst-born, Albert Roland (“A. R.”) arrived on August 2, 1841. Following him, spaced roughly two

George W. G. Ferris, Sr. George’s father.



years apart but all born in the 1840s, were Frederick Hyde, Benjamin Hyde, Harriet Clementine, and Mar-garet Gale (“Maggie.”) The second half of their ten children would be born later, in the 1850s, the young-est in 1861.

In February, 1849, George Sr. and Martha’s oldest daughter Harriet, not yet two years old, died suddenly. With their fi fth-born Margaret still an infant and spring crops to be planted, the Ferris’s mourning period had to be cut short, though the memory of their loss lingered much longer.

Later in 1849, when word of the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in California spread eastward, the news did not escape the inhabitants of Galesburg, especially those with wanderlust. Among the community’s promi-nent citizens who were affl icted with this “Western fever” were two Ferrises, the adventuresome, restless, 49-year-old Olm and his 32-year-old brother George Sr. Even though Olm was a well-experienced world traveler by then, he had not spent any time in Califor-nia, and his younger brother had never traveled farther

west than western Illinois.Along with several other Galesburg citizens, Olm and George Sr. made

plans to travel west as soon as they could and check out the opportunities the California gold fi elds offered.

By summer in 1850, several loaded caravans of wagons started moving out from Galesburg. With their crops still to be harvested, the two Fer-ris brothers had to wait until fall to join them. However, aboard one of the fi rst caravans was a 25-year-old relative of the Ferrises (through Olm’s and George Sr.’s mother, Sally Olmsted), Chauncey Noteware, who became highly connected politically in the 1860s and played a key role in where George Sr. eventually settled his family.

Born at Owego, New York in 1825, Noteware immigrated to Gales-burg at age 19. After working at odd jobs for a while, he attended Knox College, where many of his classmates were members of the Ferris family. In 1850 came the lure of going west to fi nd gold and other big opportuni-ties. Once on the West Coast, he remained there, even though he never made it rich mining for gold.

George Sr., who only stayed a short time in the California gold fi elds, saw little promise in the situation. His adventurous trip across the high plains, the Rockies, and the Sierras to San Francisco went smoothly, ex-cept for one mishap. Its fi nal deadly consequences remained unknown to George Sr. for several months. His brother Olm’s leg was broken when he was kicked by a horse. Olm was put under medical care and, after ex-changing goodbyes and best wishes with him and others in their caravan, George Sr. left to return to Illinois, taking a long, wandering, sightseeing route back home.

Martha Hyde Ferris. George’s mother.



After interviewing George Sr. about his trip, a Galesburg Evening Mailreporter wrote,

He [Ferris] took a boat from San Francisco south to the Isthmus. He crossed it part by water and part by land. Heading to New York by water, he stopped three days at Cuba. From New York, he came to New Buffalo by rail. From there, he was ferried by lake to Chicago, at that time a smaller place than New Buffalo. He reached Peoria via the Illinois and Michigan canal and the Illinois River and was conveyed the balance of the distance by stage. This remarkable journey consumed seven months and this was considered good time. (GEM 1893)

When he stepped off the stagecoach at Galesburg in late spring of 1851, Ferris was greeted not only by well-wishers but with terrible news. Olm had developed blood poisoning and complications from his leg injury. He had died in California only weeks after they had last seen each other. The news stopped George Sr. in his tracks.

In 1851, three major events were transpiring at home to help George Sr. take his mind off the situation. First, his farm and dairy—left in the hands of hired help who were paid the going rate of $10 a month—needed tending to. Second, his sixth child was on the way. And third, Galesburg residents were up in arms about their town being bypassed by the railroads building through Illinois. The fi rst item just took hard work and steady supervision; the second came to fruition on July 18, 1851, when a daughter arrived. He and Martha named her Emma California because he was so captivated with the nation’s largest western state. How could he forget its pristine beaches and rugged cliffs reaching out to the alluring blue Pacifi c Ocean?

His fascination with California, though, had to be put on the back burner for 14 more years, until after the birth of his fi nal child and the death of his much-admired father, Silvanus.

Addressing the third issue, though, took more time.

* * *

In 1851, Galesburg had fewer than a thousand full-time inhabitants. Its primary transportation link to markets was the main stagecoach line to Peoria, Illinois, where canals and riverways connected it to Chicago. If no railroad came to the town, Galesburg inhabitants faced a bleak future. The biggest promoters of a railroad line were the town’s two leading merchants, Chauncey Colton and Silas Willard, both wealthy men. They were rivals when it came to the daily operation of their general stores, but formed a strong team when uniting for a common cause.

Among community leaders joining the two merchants in their effort to attract a railroad were Rev. George Washington Gale and Silvanus Ferris, then in his late 70s, and his sons and his son-in-law Dr. James Bruce. Be-


cause his farm was within easy reach of town, George Sr.’s place became a handy meeting spot. He said,

The fi rst meeting in attracting money and interest of this scheme [securing a railroad line] was held in the dining room of our farm home. There were six or eight of us present. We held two or three meetings at the house then we began to hold them in town. I took ten shares of the stock. Afterward, I sold them to Silas Willard, who was one of my warmest friends, and who took a conspicuous part in getting the rail-road here. My brother Henry Ferris was a big investor and received the very fi rst issue of stock. (GEM 1893)

Of the $250,000 (nearly $6 million in 2009 dollars) that needed to be raised to attract a direct line from Galesburg to Chicago on the Chicago, Burl-ington and Quincy (CB&Q) rail network, Colton and Willard were by far the biggest investors. For the Ferrises, Henry was the largest subscriber, coming up with $11,000 ($260,000 in 2009 dollars). Once they raised the money and secured the railroad line, the fi rst train, pulled by a coal- and wood-burning locomotive named The Reindeer, rolled into town. It was December, 1854.

This began Galesburg’s era as a railroad town, with railroading be-coming one of its biggest and most profi table industries. In the heyday of the sleek, stainless-steel Zephyr passenger trains, one of its main streamlin-ers made a major run from Chicago to Denver and back. On this run, the romantic Zephyr would fl it through Galesburg morning and night like a shiny silver ghost.

Earlier in 1854, before The Reindeer had arrived, George Sr. and Mar-tha had another son, Edmond Ray (“Eddie”), born on August 2. Then, Martha Elizabeth arrived in 1857. On February 14, 1859, their youngest son, George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., was born. He was named after his father, George Sr. (not the Rev. George W. Gale). With three pampering and well-educated older sisters—Maggie, Emma, and Martha—it didn’t take George Jr. long to become precocious.

The year before George Jr. was born, Galesburg experienced an historic high-water mark politically. It was selected to be the scene of one of the famous Lincoln–Douglas debates in 1858, partly because of the town’s out-spokenness on slavery and partly because its railroad provided ready access to all parts. The debate was held at the newly completed Old Main building at Knox College, the fi nal major building planned during Silvanus Ferris’s last years as a trustee. The Knox College event had the largest crowd to at-tend any of these debates. Spectators stood or sat for more than three hours on a cold and windy afternoon, straining to hear what the two senatorial candidates had to say. Although Abraham Lincoln appealed to abolitionists like the Ferrises, he lost his race to Stephen Douglas that year.

Two years later, Lincoln again came to Galesburg, this time campaign-ing for the highest position in the land, the U.S. presidency—a race he did not lose.


Active well into his late 80s, Silvanus attended the debates and heard Lincoln’s speeches in both 1858 and 1860. When all was said and done, at age 87 the Ferris family patriarch cast the last vote he would ever make for a U.S. president—in 1860, for Lincoln. Indications are that all the Ferrises followed suit.

George Sr. was fascinated by people with inventive minds and engineer-ing skills. One of his good friends, the mechanically minded George W. Brown, had invented the corn planter. From Brown’s invention developed one of Galesburg’s largest industries and, with it, Brown became a well-respected local magnate. It’s conceivable that George Sr. wondered whether any of his children had such traits or could be encouraged to develop them, and whether any of them would develop anything on the order of Brown’s invention. He was in for a magnifi cent surprise!

George Sr.’s high opinion of Brown’s machine was recorded in the Galesburg Evening Mail this way:

He [Ferris] regards the invention of the corn-planter by George W. Brown of inestimable value to the country, es-pecially during the dark days of the Civil War. Ferris re-marked, ‘I have told him [Brown] that his invention was worth, during the rebellion, 100,000 men. It enabled us to plant with corn these large fi elds and put it in the power of even the women and children to take care of the crops and thus maintain the farms and raise food for both those in the fi eld and at home.’ (GEM 1893)

The 1860 census listed George Sr. as a farmer with $40,000 in real estate and $4,863 in personal property. (That combination would be the equivalent to nearly $1 million in 2009.) The 42-year-old Ferris was certainly a man of means, a gentleman farmer in the eyes of many. But he was bored.

One week after George Sr. and Martha’s tenth and fi nal child, Mary Amanda (“Mame”) was born, Silvanus peacefully passed away on June 13, 1861. At 88, he was a legendary fi gure both in Knox County and back in Herkimer County, New York. George Sr. and his oldest brother, Western, were named executors of their father’s estate. It took nearly four years to resolve his affairs and enact all his wishes. Once this was done, George Sr. eagerly sought a change. By then, the Civil War (1861–1865) was well un-derway and George Sr.’s 21-year-old son Fred was in the Union Army.

Moving On

In early spring of 1864, George Sr. sold his farm and almost everything else he owned in and around Galesburg. His plan? To move to San Jose, California. He left the comforts and success of Galesburg for the unknown, like his father Silvanus had done nearly three decades earlier when he left


New York. And just like many of Silvanus’s former New York neighbors, George Sr.’s Illinois neighbors shook their heads in puzzlement. Why leave the developing paradise of Galesburg for the wilds, uncertainties, and hard-ships out West?

Accompanying their parents on this adventure to the country’s most western frontier were all but one of their nine living children. To Fred, still wearing a Union Army uniform, George Sr. wrote on February 17, 1864: “We have sold the farm. Yes, all except what we are to have from father’s [Silvanus’s] estate, enough for a small farm. We got 40 dollars per acre [for the George Ferris, Sr. farm] by putting in a little stock and some farm tools. You will get, in a year or so, three thousand dollars. I wish you were here to go with us” (Letter from A. R. Ferris, with attachment by George Sr., to his brother Fred Ferris, Feb. 17, 1864, Galesburg, Ill.) Fred never did go out West, choosing, rather, to stay in Galesburg once he was released from the army.

As soon as Ben and Maggie wrapped up their spring semester classes at Knox College, the George Ferris, Sr. family excitedly set out for Califor-nia. They left Illinois well-off fi nancially and with great expectations. The Ferris children gladly anticipated seeing the wonderful Pacifi c Coast state that their father had been raving about for years. His 44-year old wife, ever dedicated, willing, and optimistic, looked toward to the limitless opportu-nities this change would bring for her loved ones. The decades-long dream George Sr. had harbored to live in California was on the verge of being real-ized, so close to fulfi llment he could taste it!

Unlike when he and his brother traveled the route in 1850 with sev-eral caravans, George Sr.’s 1864 wagon train was much smaller. The Indian War of 1864 was at its zenith, the Plains tribes were on the warpath, and the unsettledness of the Civil War showed up everywhere. In traversing the nearly 2,000 miles of untamed wilderness, they crossed all sorts of rugged countryside, including rivers and ravines, worried about bandits and ma-rauding Indians. They endured the numerous diffi culties and discomforts of nineteenth-century overland travel. Plus, little Mame was suffering from rheumatic fever and needed to be kept on a soft pillow at all times.

The trip took four months of grueling, burdensome work for the adults and teenagers, and was fi lled with pain for three-year-old Mame. How-ever, for the three other youngest in the family (Eddie, 10, Martha, 7, and George Jr., 5), the trek must have seemed like high adventure, the biggest in their lifetime.

Considering its small size and vulnerability, the Ferris party was lucky. They never encountered threatening war deserters or bandits, and only once faced an Indian threat. Recalled George Jr.’s older sister Maggie, who was 16 at the time, “Our guide got word that the Indians were coming, so we put all the wagons in a circle and everyone hid in the wagons. But the Indi-ans never came!” (King 1984). When telling and retelling her grandchildren the story years later, Maggie could have embellished the tale but never did, only saying that it was the only real Indian scare they had on their trip west, and “that was all there was to it.” (She was not one to stretch a story.)


Well before they even came close to reaching their anticipated destina-tion, the Ferrises’ net worth fell signifi cantly. They left Knox County as mil-lionaires, but were no more. They remained wealthy, even though the un-settledness of the Civil War and shortage of goods nationwide had certainly had an effect, but the major factor in devaluing their greenbacks was that business in the West was transacted in gold, not paper currency. According to George Sr., “I lost $10,000 to $12,000 [$180,000 in 2009 dollars] by the change from greenbacks for gold” (GEM 1893).

When they arrived in Carson City, Nevada, in September, 1864, the Ferris caravan stopped to regroup and resupply. They knew crossing the foreboding Sierra Nevada Mountains with the possibility of an early winter storm was dangerous, serious business. They had to be prepared. While in Carson City, they were the guests of their old friend and distant relative Chauncey Noteware, now a political heavyweight in Nevada, a probate judge, and on the verge of becoming the fi rst secretary of state of Nevada.

At a dinner party he and his wife gave in their honor, Noteware in-troduced George Sr. and the adult members of his family to the prominent people of the area. Included was a ruggedly handsome, 33-year-old rancher from Germany, one of the ablest and wealthiest landowners around. He and Ferris’s oldest daughter, Maggie, caught each other’s eye.

Before the evening ended, Noteware and other local business people had presented the Ferrises with convincing reasons to plant roots in Carson Valley, not the least of which was that their paper money would buy more prime land in Nevada than California. Important decisions needed to be made, and quickly.


CHAPTER FOUR

Carson Valley to Troy

If one advances confi dently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

—Henry David Thoreau

In the 1840s, when explorer John C. Fremont was mapping the Amer-ican West, his chief scout was the legendary frontiersman Kit Carson.

They came from the Rocky Mountains westward and, after traversing long stretches of desert and diffi cult terrain, the pathfi nder’s party fi nally entered a wide-open, high valley running up to and along the foothills of the tower-ing Sierra Nevada Mountains. In 1844, Fremont named the river fl owing through the long valley the Carson River, in honor of Carson. Later, the valley took his name as well, Carson Valley. So did a bustling frontier town that would grow up and serve as the gateway to the Pacifi c, Carson City. Once Nevada became a state, the latter was named the state capital.

Some, like writer Samuel Clemens, also referred to the town as the “Hub of the Sierra.” Born in Missouri in 1835, Clemens arrived in the area in 1862 to work for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, a rich, boom-or-bust mining town northeast of Carson City. In addition to his regular columns, he was sent to Carson City to report on the legislature. That was when he fi rst signed his name “Mark Twain.” Many of the anec-dotes in Twain’s book Roughing It, about his overland journey to the West, paralleled what the Ferrises and other pioneers in the 1860s experienced.

When the Ferris caravan rolled into Carson City in the early fall of 1864, rather than being a “millionaire gentleman farmer,” George Sr. was fi nan-cially worth about 80% of what he had been when he left Illinois four months earlier. But he still had a pretty comfortable sum of money, for the times. Even though a few Carson Valley families were richer, the Ferris family was perceived as being of a higher social stature. Local folks liked to jest, “The Ferrises arrived in fi ne carriages drawn by thoroughbred horses, while everyone else came by wagons pulled by workhorses or mules, or on horseback

CARSON VALLEY TO TROY 33

or by foot” (Interview with Steve Achard, Aug. 22, 2007, San Clemente, Calif.). In reality, the Ferrises, like every-one else, came west in covered wagons escorted by men on horseback, with only a few carriages.

The reduced value of his greenbacks was not the only reason for George Sr.’s next decision. Noteware’s dinner party news about the potential of the Carson Valley area had a signifi cant impact on Ferris and on his family. That Nevada would gain statehood on October 31, 1864; that Car-son City would be the state’s capital; and that their cousin Noteware would be the fi rst secretary of state of Nevada were important.

So the Ferrises stayed in Carson Valley and invested in property around Carson City, starting with a large ranch. Here, George Sr. got a lot more land for his money than he could have in California. That meant the fi nal leg of his dream to live in California would be put on hold for another 18 years, until all his children were involved in their own pursuits and two of his be-loved sons were deceased.

George Sr. bought a ranch just south of Carson City and next to the un-forgettable rancher they had met at the Notewares, the fellow who showed interest in his daughter, Maggie: Heinrich Frederick (“Fred”) Dangberg. Originally from Halle, Germany, Dangberg had arrived in Nevada in 1853, at age 25. He had stopped at Virginia City, where prospecting for silver and gold (four years before the discovery of the area’s fabulously rich Com-stock Lode) was yielding few fortunes. In any case, mining did not appealto Dangberg. He was more attracted to the meadowlands in the Carson Valley, where Mormon settlers had earlier showed that the land could sup-port an agricultural economy if it was irrigated.

The Ferris Ranch in the Carson Valley, Nevada, as it looks today. George experienced the rolling pas-tureland and rugged Sierra Nevada foothills every day of his youth.



In 1856, Dangberg homesteaded his fi rst 160 acres of land and, by bringing water to his fi elds, produced bumper crops, mostly hay. He de-voted the rest of his career to improving his properties, acquiring new land, and investing in various business ventures; he served as a ready “banker” to many. As a result of his efforts, thousands of acres of desert were put under irrigation and made productive. By the time he passed away at age 73, his land, with the help of three of his sons, had grown to 36,000 acres, making it one of the fi nest and largest cattle and stock ranches in the entire West. In many ways, that family was like Bonanza’s Cartwrights—Ben, Adam,Hoss, and Little Joe—of television fame.

When Dangberg fi rst met the Ferrises, he was well on his way to reach-ing his material goals, and he was a bachelor.

Once the Ferris family purchased property next to his and became his neighbors, Fred quickly befriended them. He especially paid attention to Maggie. She found him attractive, as well. Before long, a full-fl edged romance blossomed even though he was twice her age. Older men commonly married younger women on the western fron-tier of the 1860s, so when Fred proposed marriage it did not raise any eyebrows. Of more concern to Maggie’s siblings was Dangberg’s nationality than his age.

Ruth Achard, Maggie’s granddaughter, said, “He [Dangberg] used to come and see her at the Ferris house, and her brothers and sisters were all peeking at them through the cracks. They didn’t want her to marry him because he was a German, and they thought Ger-mans were cruel to their wives. They loved their sister, and didn’t want her to marry him. But she did” (King 1984). Their concern, however, proved to be misplaced. He was kind and loving, and their marriage long-lasting and extremely happy.

Their wedding took place March 15, 1865, making Maggie the fi rst of George Jr.’s brothers and sisters to get married. Six months later, his brother Fred, the second-oldest, who stayed in Galesburg after the Civil War, mar-ried Elizabeth Sherman. Both were 22 years old. George Jr. would see little of this brother while growing up and later in life. The same was true of his third-oldest brother Ben, who, after staying only a short time in Carson City,

returned to Galesburg to live.Because no adequate housing fi rst existed on the Ferris ranch, they

constructed a fancy new dwelling along the Carson River, ample enough to house George Sr., Martha, and their three girls and three boys, the oldest being Albert, age 24. Finished in 1865, this home was as modern as possible and was constructed with care. About the Ferris house, Mag-gie’s granddaughter Grace Dangberg said, “The Ferris ranch house was built with nails hammered out from the anvils of Henry Van Sickle and

Margaret “Maggie” Ferris Dang-berg. George’s older sister, who was married to H. Fred Dangberg, a Ben Cartwright (from the Bonanza tele-vision series) type of rancher tycoon. For years this photo was erroneously thought to be that of George’s wife, Margaret Ann (Beatty) Ferris.



plastered with lime reinforced with horsehair. It was graced with a marble-faced fi replace in the parlor” (Dangberg 2002).

The Ferris ranch house, however, wasn’t the biggest or most elaborate around. That label fi t the Dangberg house, with its many outbuildings where Maggie ruled. Being close to her family, Maggie visited when she could and invited her parents and siblings over often. When at her place, it was hard not to notice the many servants and staff they had to help with chores and the like.

George Ferris, Sr. and Fred Dangberg quickly developed a close father-in-law, son-in-law relationship, and much more. They became trusted busi-ness partners in many ventures for as long as they lived. Each highly re-spected and admired the another. Dangberg, the considerably wealthier of the two, always helped out if money was needed for any cause, even for Ferris’s children.

Dangberg seemed particularly fond of Maggie’s youngest brother, George Jr. He and Maggie took a keen interest in the boy’s upbringing and his future. Shortly after they were married, 7-year-old George Jr. wrote a composition about the ranching life, which showed him to be a very clever and observant youngster. (The composition remains a valued item in the Dangberg archives.) Part of what George Jr. composed was,

When the men irrigated the grain, the black birds would be scattered all over the fences watching for crickets. As the water ran over the grain, it would drive them out of the ground and some of them would have to swim to the banks, then the birds would catch them and, when they get

The restored Carson Valley ranch house where George lived from ages 5 to 10. It featured a marble fi re-place and other niceties that other local ranches lacked.



their fi ll, they pack them off and stick them on some shirp [sic] bushes until they get hungry. And also the butcher-birds will do the same thing. And the meadowlark and the chipping [sic] birds are very peculiar about there [sic] food. They live mostly on grain and seeds. (George Ferris school composition titled “Ranching,” Carson City, Nev., 1866)

In his youth (and later in life), George Jr. respected and related to his brother-in-law, even though the latter was more his father’s age than his sister’s. Dangberg’s grandiose, daring, and sweeping visions were not lost on the youngster. Nor were those of his own father who, as circumstances allowed, was quick to start new ventures. Much of George Jr.’s later busi-ness acumen came from these two role models, perhaps infl uenced more by Dangberg than even his father.

As he matured, George Jr. always had Dangberg’s support and, in a pinch, knew he could call on him for advice and even money. Dangberg seemed to be his “ace in the hole” in times of diffi culty, as was his father, although in later years, his father’s money was spread thin in supporting his children. Also, George Sr. had setbacks at various times, which meant his fi nancial support was not always available.

* * *

During his boyhood, George Jr. may have been called Gale to avoid confu-sion with his father, who went by the name of George all his life. There are no indications that George Jr. was ever called “Junior” and, once away from home, he was “George” to all who knew him. That is also what his father usually called him, except occasionally in his writings when he re-ferred to his son as “GWG.”

* * *

As youngsters, George Jr. and his fi ve-year-older brother Eddie lived a Tom Sawyer-like life on the family ranch, being children of prosperous parents. They had considerable land to roam, horses to ride, and free time to enjoy, meshed with a few chores. In his boyhood, George Jr. wrote, “I think ranch-ing is the best occupation I know of and I like to live near the river so I can go hunting and fi shing. I like to hunt ducks better than any other game. My brother Eddie and I would go down to the river hunting and he always made me get the ducks wither [sic] they were in the river or not” (George Ferris school composition titled “Ranching,” Carson City, Nev., 1866).

Even though precocious and possibly spoiled as a child, George Jr. had a close relationship with his parents and felt comfortable teasing them. In recounting a typical outing with his father, young Ferris said,

One day my father and I went fi shing. We dropped our lines into a slew where the water was very dirty. We did


not expect to catch any fi sh but we happened to stop there because we were tired. But my father dropped his line in fi rst and he caught a fi sh about ten inches in length and, as soon as he had his fi sh off and had on another bait, I caught one about fourteen inches in length and then my father was ashamed of his so he gave it away. (George Fer-ris school composition titled “Ranching,” Carson City, Nev., 1866)

Growing up on a ranch from age 5 to 10, then being around ranches from 10 to 14 after the family moved to town, Ferris helped (or at least observed) his father, brother-in-law, and other Carson Valley ranchers con-struct irrigations canals, small bridges, water conveyance devices, farm buildings, and a myriad of utilitarian structures. It whetted his appetite for engineering and building things.

Rumors are that George Jr., along with other boys in the valley, became fascinated with a huge, undershot waterwheel at Cradlebaugh Bridge over the Carson River at a nearby ranch—perhaps his inspiration for the later Ferris Wheel. In the offi cial publication of the Douglas County (Nev.) His-torical Society about Ferris, author Lois Jones wrote,

The wheel turned slowly in the river current, hoisting buckets of water to be dumped into a trough for the re-freshment of travel-weary horse and mules carrying sup-plies to the booming mining district south of Carson Val-ley. As he spent many hours watching the motion of the big water wheel, young George Ferris may have dreamed of riding around on one of its buckets. From that early dream came the inspiration for a gifted engineer’s wonder-ful wheel.” (Jones 1984)

Whether he was inspired by the Cradlebaugh or the even bigger Mexi-can water wheel at a nearby mill, or several nameless water-turned wheels within a horseback ride of the Ferris ranch, young Ferris certainly had the opportunity to observe them. Then, when at college in New York, another wheel may have caught his fancy: the massive, 62-foot-diameter, industrial-use Burden water wheel, created by the famous inventor Henry Burden (1791–1871). Or was the answer to the mystery and oft-asked question “Where did Ferris get the idea for his creation?” revealed in a legal deposition he gave in 1893 after the Ferris Wheel was in operation? We will see.

Just as he was getting a good start in his elementary schooling, George Jr. became an uncle twice in 1866. First, on May 23, his brother Fred and his wife had a son. They named him George after Fred and George’s father, George Sr. Then, on December 10, his sister Maggie also had a boy. She named him Albert after her (and George Jr.’s) oldest brother, her favorite brother who remained a hard-working bachelor his whole life.

Tired of living on an isolated ranch, George Sr. eventually purchased the fi ve-year-old Carson City resi-dence of Mary and Gregory Sears, moving into town in 1868. The Sears house was on a large corner lot, a couple of blocks from the center of town and the site of the state capitol building. It was (and remains) a well-appointed, two-story frame structure measuring approximately 60 feet by 60 feet, with Greek, Gothic Revival, and Classical Revival architectural infl uences. (The house has been converted into offi ces and remains

in good condition. Designated the Ferris Mansion, it is a tourist attraction under private ownership. Its interior is not available to the public.)

* * *

Events in 1869 had a major infl uence on young George’s future. On May 30, America’s Transcontinental Railroad opened for business with the driving of a ceremonial golden spike at Promontory Summit in north-ern Utah. A highly controversial engineer/contractor, Gen. J. H. Ledlie (1832–1882), who would later have a key role in the nascent career of Ferris, played a signifi cant part in its successful construction. The comple-tion of the Transcontinental, the fi rst such transcontinental railroad line anywhere, made headline news around the world. It speeded up travel to and from the East and West Coasts, and all places in between, by weeks, not merely days.


The Cradlebaugh water wheel, Carson Valley, Nevada. Legends suggest that this was Ferris’s inspira-tion in designing his Ferris Wheel. The other was the 60-foot-diameter Burden water wheel near Troy, New York.



Similar to what Galesburg citizens did in the early 1850s when the railroad threatened to bypass them (and not unlike what Salt Lake City in Utah and Den-ver in Colorado also had to do), local Carson Valley entrepreneurs built a rail link to the main line in order to survive and prosper. Soon the Virginia and Truckee (V&T) Railroad between Carson City and Virginia City was completed and linked to the Transcontinental. As the Ferrises had done in Galesburg, local leaders and monied people in Carson City, including the wealthy Dangbergs, stepped forward to ensure its completion.

Also in 1869, 51-year-old George Sr. went into the horticultural busi-ness, leaving behind the chores of running a widespread ranch. His oldest son Albert, then 28, was available for such work. For years, while ranch-ing, farming, and raising livestock, George Sr. had imported numerous va-rieties of trees from Illinois and other parts of the Midwest: large numbers of evergreens and deciduous specimens, including black walnut, chestnut, elm, hickory, and oak. Thus, when he started his new business, his nurser-ies were well stocked.

That year, Carson City was selected as one of the locations for a U.S. mint. While it was under construction, a tremendous earthquake rocked the area on December 28, 1869, severely damaging numerous buildings. To everyone’s relief, the over-budget but well-designed mint structure survived the tremor without damage. It began turning out silver dollars with the mintmark CC by February 1870. Chauncey Noteware, who stayed close

The Ferris Mansion in Carson City, Nevada as it looks today. George spent his early teenage years here, before leaving for military school in Oakland, California and then on to college at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.



to his Ferris cousins, was named head of the Nevada mint by President Ulysses S. Grant. It proved to be another signifi cant political appointment for a well-known person already in a high place, in case “Ferris Wheel” George ever needed one.

The same year the state capitol building was completed in Carson City, in 1871, George Jr.’s Illinois-based brother whom he hardly knew, 26-year-old Ben, got married in Galesburg. One year later, his second-oldest sister, Emma, married Oscar T. Barber. He had a successful general merchandise business in Carson City, was in the Nevada legislature, and, for a time, served as one of Dangberg’s lawyers. George did not always have a favor-able relationship with Barber, especially later in the 1890s.

The Education of George

Young Ferris received his early education in Carson City schools up to age 14. Then in 1873, a few months after his third-oldest sister Martha married, George left home to attend the Oakland Military Academy in Oakland, California. Little was recorded from his days at the Academy; it could not even be confi rmed whether he graduated as a fi rst lieutenant or a captain (it was one or the other). Knowing that George made friends easily (even though withdrawn at times), liked to be the center of attention, had a good voice, and was athletic, strapping, and nice-looking, he was probably involved in his share of activities and was a well-liked cadet at Oakland.

While attending the Academy, George decided to become a civil engi-neer and build great projects nationwide. The education he received there was certainly sound enough to allow him to pursue that goal. By the time he graduated from Oakland, in the spring of 1876, at age 17, Ferris had set his sights high. He planned to attend Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York, the most respected and prestigious private engineering college in the nation.

The same year George received his high school diploma from the Acad-emy, his father secured a much-sought-after contract to do the landscaping around the fi ve-year-old capitol building in Carson City. There, George Sr. planted some of the hardwood trees he had been importing from the Mid-west. Many of them, tall and stately, still adorn the capitol grounds today. The towering Colorado blue spruce in the center and front of the capitol—ritually lit as the state Christmas tree in December—is alleged to have been planted by him, as well as many stately trees growing throughout the his-toric town.

A strong fence had to be built to protect the newly planted trees and bushes from the heavy and erratic traffi c in the bustling town, from “wheels and passing horses” (Ferris 2006). George Jr., probably home for a few months before heading to college, likely spent the summer of 1876 helping his father landscape the capitol grounds and build the fence. Once September arrived, George left for the East, never again to reside in the West.


Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, founded in 1824 by industrialist Stephen Van Rensselaer, had graduated unprecedented engineering leaders by the time Ferris ar-rived. Among its most legendary was Washington Roe-bling (1837–1926), son of the renowned John Roebling (1806–1869), whose daring design for the awesome Brooklyn Bridge was scheduled for completion in 1883. Washington Roebling, an 1857 RPI graduate, took over supervision of its construction after his father died in a freak accident at the project site in 1869. Talk of the great bridge permeated the lecture rooms and halls of RPI when George was taking classes in the late 1870s and early 1880s.

Troy, New York, home of RPI, was located halfway between Ferris’s great-grandfather Sylvanus’s homestead near South Salem and his grandfa-ther Silvanus’s farms in Norway. George’s arrival in New York could have been considered a “return-of-the-native” event. Most of the descendents of Jeffrey, progenitor of the Ferris lineage in America, were concentrated in New York and Connecticut. George could have contacted them at any time but there are no accounts that he did, or any records that he visited his uncle Timothy, still living on an old family farm in Norway. Instead, he kept busy with his demanding studies.

To attend RPI in those days, students were required to be bright, able to pass stringent entrance examinations, and have families (or supporters) with the wherewithal to pay heavy tuition fees, and be able to afford books, sup-plies, and off-campus room and board. Having excessive monies for other items and distractions was discouraged. After all, only 20% to 30% of each freshman class would survive the institution’s grueling pace and graduate in four years with a degree in engineering. Of the 39 students who entered with

The Oakland Military Academy, Oakland, California, in the late 1800s. George attended high school here from 1873 until 1876, possibly graduating as a fi rst lieutenant.

Source: Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.


Ferris, only 11 graduated in four years, and three in fi ve years.

Only 17 when he matriculated at RPI on September 14, 1876, George was one of the youngest students and the only Westerner in his class. He was likely impressed by the hustle and bustle of an es-tablishment well-pleased with itself, along with its customary rituals and the fanfare of an Ivy League-type college.

Approximately two decades earlier, Washington Roebling, 17 years old when a freshmen like Fer-ris at RPI, found the school’s cur-riculum and policies too harsh for students that young. After he grad-uated, he wrote a scathing assess-ment of his years at there. About the only thing he did not slam was the prescribed school uniform—a dark-green frock coat with a black velvet collar and a cap with a gold symbol on the band in front. Every-

thing else he severely critiqued. Roebling said RPI was a “terrible treadmill” that forced “an avalanche of fi gures and facts into young brains not qualifi ed to assimilate them as yet.” He declared,

The director of the Institute was the hardest taskmaster that ever lived, and that the boys were ground down and crammed with knowl-edge and mathematics that their poor young brains can not make use of. I am still busy try-ing to forget the heterogeneous mass of unus-able knowledge that I could only memorize, not really digest. When a class starts with 65 and only graduates 12, it is proof of the ter-rible grind[….] The few who graduated left the school as mental wrecks. (Steinman 1972)

No doubt, Roebling had been affected by the loss of one of his best friends and classmates who committed suicide while at RPI—no small reason being the rigors of the place. The details of the di-sastrous scandal were still talked about, in hushed tones, years later during

The massive blue spruce tree planted by George’s father at the state capi-tol grounds in Carson City in 1876, the year George left for RPI and the East Coast. It continues to be adorned with holiday lights every year and serves as the offi cial state Christmas tree.



Ferris’s time. Nevertheless, by that time Roebling was highly supportive of the school fi nancially and otherwise, and was quite proud to be a Rensse-laer graduate.

Even though the course work was extremely grueling, indications are that Ferris greatly enjoyed (and benefi ted intellectually from) his years at RPI. Courses there at the time were on a pass-fail basis and, although from time to time George may have been reexamined for a certain class or by a demanding professor, his work matched or exceeded that of his classmates overall.

In addition to keeping pace academically, the personable and athletic Ferris participated in several extracurricular activities. He was sophomore class president, a member of the football, baseball, and rifl e teams, and fi rst tenor in the Glee Club. His willingness to take on challenges and accept diffi cult assignments was apparent both in the classroom and on the sports fi eld. Said RPI Professor Larry Feeser, “Ferris had the admired reputation of invariably winning footraces and being able to throw a football or baseball farther then anyone on campus” (Interviews with Larry Feeser, Aug. 6 and Oct. 5, 2007, Boulder, Colo.). In an intercollegiate event with rival Union College, for example, Ferris won the “throwing-baseball” event with a spec-tacular toss of 344 feet (15 yards beyond the length of a football fi eld).

Ferris was also an active member of the Chi Phi fraternity and the Pi Eta Scientifi c Society. In fact, he was one of the founders of Chi Phi at RPI, attracting a Theta chapter there in 1878. While working on this ef-fort, he met a number of people with whom he would partner on various business ventures later in his career. Among them were William A. Vincent (1857–1919), the future chief justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court and law partner of Clarence S. Darrow, one of the key attorneys in Scopes “monkey trial” of 1925.

Others in George’s class who were heavily involved in the formation of Chi Phi on campus were Francisco de Assis Cintra from Brazil, Gustave Kaufman (1859–1913) from Pennsylvania, and Frank C. Osborn (1857–1922) from Michigan. They all stayed active in Chi Phi groups around the country long after college. Because many Chi Phi members became accomplished industry leaders, belonging to that fraternity helped develop key alliances that could quickly advance one’s profession. Ferris, Osborn, and Kaufman were also teammates on a number of RPI’s sports teams and often socialized together. After college, they became business colleagues. With Kaufman, in particular, Ferris became a life-long friend and engineer-ing associate.

Always a master raconteur with an outgoing, ice-breaker persona, George had no trouble establishing lasting friendships at the Institute, not only with his fraternity brothers and classmates but also with students in other classes. They, too, became part of his valuable alliances over time.

In 1879, Ferris received bad news from home and from Troy. He learned that the calls on his father’s fi nances from the family and various business pursuits were so extensive that George Sr. could not send his son more money for a while. Panic!


Not one to give up easily, George turned to his ace in the hole, his sister Maggie’s prosperous husband Fred Dangberg. In a letter to him asking for help, George said,

If you can see me through, I will be greatly obliged to you and will try and pay you principal and interest at 10%. I can’t do anything better than to send you my note payable as soon as possible after I shall have graduated, and my everlasting obligations. Now if this matter is going to in-convenience you, I want you to write and tell me of it, and I will come home, for though I am very anxious to fi nish I am bound not to put you out. (Jones 1984)

Dangberg, as he often did, came to his rescue.The bad news from Troy was that George had not cleared his Rational

Mechanics course work to the satisfaction of his professors. He would have to retake the course and retest in it. That meant he would not graduate in 1880 as he had hoped.

George’s two main professors for Rational Mechanics (and who were responsible for that decision) were William H. Burr (1851–1934) and John A. L. Waddell (1854–1938), both stern, pompous taskmasters. Indeed, both became prominent members of the engineering profession later, after leaving RPI. Burr was consulting engineer on the Catskill Aqueduct in New York and a key member of the U.S. Isthmian Canal Commission in 1904, charged with determining the best waterway route to connect the Atlantic and Pacifi c oceans. Waddell was one of the most honored American bridge engineers of his era, highly decorated by the governments of China, Italy, Japan, and Russia. His designs of large bridges, especially movable and high-lift types, were legendary. So was his classic, internationally acclaimed bridge design text, Bridge Engineering. It became the gold standard for the bridge-building industry for decades.

As Ferris entered his fi fth year at Rensselaer, his youngest sister Mame married Alexander Ardery at Carson City on September 29, 1880. Typical of his sisters marrying older men, she was 19 and Ardery was 30. Mame’s husband, like all George’s brothers-in-law, was a hardworking, successful businessman. Shortly after he married into the Ferris family, he was made vice president and manager of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad in Nevada and California.

All of Ferris’s sisters married well—Maggie to Fred Dangberg, Emma to Oscar Barber, Martha to Charles Schultz, and Mame to Ardery—and remained in the Carson City area raising their families. They continued to make George an uncle many times over. His brothers Fred and Ben, with their growing families in Galesburg, did the same. Only George and his brothers Albert and Eddie remained unmarried and childless, he in New York and they in Nevada.

Ferris’s extra year satisfying his Rational Mechanics defi ciencies al-lowed him to increase his knowledge concerning the strength and properties


of materials, and learn more about chemical processes. Both skills would one day prove useful in his consulting businesses. However, no evidence exists that during this additional time at RPI Ferris might have conceived his idea for a giant observation wheel. Even though many students elected to write about the various engineering aspects of the nearby Burden Iron Works water wheel for their senior thesis papers, Ferris did not. Rather, he chose to analyze and critique a large local bridge structure.

His resulting thesis was given the unimaginative title of “Review of Wrought Iron Deck Bridge on the Boston Hoosac Tunnel & Western Rail-way at Schaghticoke, New York.” (Refer to Appendix D, Conclusions Sec-tion of Ferris’s RPI Thesis.) Methodical in his analysis, Ferris was highly critical of (and alarmed by) the bridge’s design and construction. Not one to ever hold back his opinion, he concluded, “We do not [Ferris did not] consider the bridge in its present condition safe for public use.” Many key structural members, he stated, were totally “useless” in their function. What, if anything, was done by the bridge owners or authorities to correct the defi ciencies he uncovered was not recorded.

When Ferris received his civil engineering degree in 1881, in his class was Garnett Douglas Baltimore, the fi rst black to graduate from RPI. That must have pleased the long line of ardent abolitionists in the Ferris family. Of the 19 young men George graduated with, only Ferris and Virgil H. Hewes were from the West. Even though most of his classmates from the class of 1876–1880 were actively pursuing jobs in the engineering or con-struction fi eld by the time he received his diploma, Ferris quickly caught up with and surpassed them.

Alive when Ferris graduated were his parents, all his brothers and sis-ters, numerous cousins, several nieces and nephews, and four of his father’s brothers (his uncles Western, Timothy, William, and Henry). As proud as they may have been of George’s achievement—the fi rst Ferris to receive an engineering degree from the most prestigious engineering institution in the nation—none of them attended his graduation ceremonies, which took place on June 15 in RPI’s Music Hall. He was alone at the event.

Right after graduation, Ferris found himself in a quandary. Without a job and with no prospects for an engineering position with anyone he had contacted, he was compelled to contact his loved ones in Nevada, writing, “I am so anxious to get home and get to doing something. I know that I can fi nd plenty to do. It may not be very lucrative work but what I do I care. I am young and strong” (Jones 1984).

Discouraged, the 22-year-old seemed ready to give up, or at least post-pone, his engineering career. Fortunately, however, a position with a rail-road contracting and engineering fi rm headquartered in New York City, the J. H. Ledlie Company, materialized. But what would he be doing, and where?

The construction engineering company, founded and headed by James Ledlie, a balding 49-year-old with a bushy mustache and sloped shoul-ders, had played a substantial role in building the Transcontinental Rail-road in the 1860s. But these were the 1880s and, even though Ledlie was


well connected with a number of railroad companies, including being an offi cer and chief engineer for the Nevada Central Railroad Company, ru-mors abounded that he was a hard drinker and reckless gambler, and had been an inept military leader drummed out of the Union Army during the Civil War.

Ferris would learn what he needed to know soon enough.

CHAPTER FIVE

Founding of a Firm

A wise man will make more opportunities than he fi nds.

—Francis Bacon

During his fi rst few months with the J. H. Ledlie Company in the sum-mer of 1881, Ferris found himself in New York City doing offi ce

work. Being in the midst of the hustle and bustle of America’s largest city—approaching two million souls—must have been stimulating for a young man from the wide-open spaces of Nevada. By comparison, his life in Troy, Oakland, and Carson City had to have seemed inconsequential, slow-paced, and less than momentous.

The perceptions youth obtain from their fi rst career encounters often linger a lifetime and infl uence the direction of their careers. Being with the Ledlie fi rm was Ferris’s fi rst encounter with an established engineering/construction operation, and with an experienced and worldly engineer. One researcher of Ferris wrote, “Ledlie taught him [Ferris] the ropes of real life engineering” (Ulizio 2007). If this was even remotely true, what an initial engineering mentor or role model to have!

Working for a character like Gen. J. H. Ledlie would have been eye-opening for any new engineer regarding a wide range of issues, some favorable and others (especially about his boss’s temperament) highly nega-tive. Even if only whispered about in the offi ce, it is unlikely that a person with Ferris’s heightened level of observation (exhibited from early boy-hood) would not have discerned certain indiscretions in his employer’s past. Nevertheless, one of Ledlie’s most admirable exploits was how, after the Civil War, he established a prosperous railroad engineering and construc-tion company responsible for projects all over the country. His role in the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad included obtaining the lucra-tive contract for constructing most of the bridges, trestles, and snow sheds on the Union Pacifi c portion of the historic railroad. In fact, he was among the invited dignitaries when the golden spike was driven at Promontory Summit in Utah, on May 30, 1869.

FOUNDING OF A FIRM 47


After the Transcontinental, his fi rm tackled the construction of the Nevada Central Railroad. On one assignment, he set records while racing to get a 92-mile-long section built into Austin, Nevada, within six months. He had to meet a deadline just before a bond issue expired. In his honor, the Nevada Central named a locomotive, The General J. H. Ledlie, after him. A main siding of the Central Pacifi c Railroad through Reese River Valley in Nevada also bears his name. In 1874, Ledlie added to his engineering reputation by serving as one of the key consultants for the construction of the main breakwater for the Chicago harbor. While Fer-ris was working for him, Ledlie was chief engineer for railways in both California and Nevada, and was presi-dent of the Baltimore, Cincinnati and Western Railroad (BC&W) Construction Company.

The Ledlie family went as far back in America his-tory as the Ferris family did, and, by the early and mid-1800s, several Ledlies were well established and infl u-ential on the East Coast. James Ledlie had connections in high places. Born in Utica, New York, and a graduate of Union College in Schenectady, he served as an assis-tant engineer in the New York State Engineer’s Offi ce for Canals before the Civil War.

Shortly after the beginning of the Civil War, Ledlie used his family name and infl uence to obtain high-ranking commissions in the Union Army. He served fi rst as a major of the 19th New York In-fantry, which became the 3rd New York Artillery Regiment. In 1862, he was promoted to brigadier general in command of the Artillery Brigade of the Department of North Carolina. Just after the start of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign in 1864, Ledlie transferred to the Union Army of the Potomac and assumed command of Gen. Ambrose Burnsides’s First Division.

In that position, during the Siege of Petersburg (Virginia), Ledlie failed to brief his men on the battle plan, a main ingredient of which was to move around both sides of a deep crater. Not knowing the plan, more than 5,000 leaderless Union soldiers entered the crater. Unable to exit its steep sides, they became sitting ducks. Thousands were slaughtered by Confederate sol-diers fi ring down on them. Ledlie not only failed to lead his men into battle, he didn’t even accompany them. “He stayed behind in a bunker, drinking and getting royally drunk” (PHM 2007).

When Ledlie was summarily relieved of duty and forced to resign his commission, a subordinate remarked that his “removal from command was a heavy loss to the enemy” (PHM 2007). To Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Ledlie was forever “the most inept and cowardly offi cer in the entire Union Army. [Besides being] otherwise ineffi cient, Ledlie proved also to possess disquali-fi cations less common among soldiers” (PHM 2007). Conceivably, drinking

Gen. James H. Ledlie, Ferris’s fi rst boss after graduating as a civil en-gineer from RPI in 1881. Although brilliant in many ways, Ledlie was plagued with a number of character fl aws.

Source: Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.


and careless ways continued to haunt him even while Ferris was in his em-ployment. (Ledlie died at 50 from dropsy and jaundice in August 1882.)

In October 1881, the Ledlie company removed Ferris from big-city life and sent him to Charleston, West Virginia, on a fi eld assignment. The aggressive little town had recently been designated the state’s capital and boasted of a population of more than 4,000. Nonetheless, being based there was a drastic change from the lifestyle Ferris experienced in New York City. His fi rst task in West Virginia was as transitman on a Led-lie crew laying out a 78-mile-long route up the Elk River Valley for the BC&W Railroad.

The Elk River, the main tributary of the Kanawha River, intersected the Kanawha as it passed through Charleston. The terrain in the area, its val-leys and wide-open spaces silhouetted by mountain ranges, resembled the Carson Valley of George’s youth. It surely brought back memories of how much he had loved hunting and fi shing and the outdoors when growing up, and rekindled the maverick spirit of his carefree youth.

In January 1882, Ledlie elevated Ferris to party chief. Among his proj-ects in that position were the planning, locating, and building of a 3.5-mile-long narrow-gauge railroad in Putnam County, West Virginia. However, by then it was a forgone conclusion that the Ledlie’s son, Charles, who had been a year behind Ferris at RPI, would soon be joining the fi rm once he received his degree. Consequently, Ferris began looking for another job.

When Charles Ledlie graduated in June 1882, his father’s company im-mediately hired him and made him vice president in charge of engineering construction and operations with the Nevada Central Railroad. By then Ferris, had left Ledlie’s company for greener pastures. He had accepted a promising job as chief engineer with the newly formed Queen City Mining Company at Queen City, West Virginia, located on the Kanawha River near Charleston. Because of the abundance of low-grade coal found in the area, the hamlet of Queen City was eventually renamed Black Betsy.

Although the Queen City position held great possibilities, going with such a new, unproven entity had its uncertainties. Nonetheless, Ferris at-tacked his new job with vigor and inventiveness. He was in charge of de-signing and building all the company’s mine facilities, including the con-struction of a large coal trestle on the Kanawha and three long tunnels. Said Ferris, “I located and drove three tunnels, each 1,800 feet long, for the coal works” (Nason 1887). After four months with the company, he was made its general manager and his prospects looked rosy. But only a few months later, in the late fall of 1882 when demand for Queen City’s products waned and its fortunes took a drastic nosedive, the coal company quickly closed its doors and Ferris was out of a job.

Less than two years after he received his hard-earned civil engineer-ing degree with high hopes of doing great engineering projects, Ferris’s fu-ture looked bleak. He was fast approaching his twenty-fi fth birthday; any dreams of greatness he had seemed distant, his career seemed rudderless, and the work he had been doing seemed lackluster and disappointing, even for someone with his innate optimism.


Even though he had been away from home since he was 14, this was the fi rst time George felt alone and jobless, without any structure in his daily activities. Both at Oakland and at Troy, he could turn to classmates and professors in times of diffi culty and for fun. Not so in West Virginia. Any close acquaintances he may have made at the coal company fast dis-appeared. They left Queen City in search of their next employment.

Coinciding with George’s layoff in West Virginia, his father fi nally reached the land of his dreams—golden California. But 64-year-old George Sr. did not go there to retire. Leaving his tree nursery business and other properties back in Nevada, with gusto he moved and began buying land and investing heavily in Riverside, California, his new home. High on his agenda was the development of citrus tree orchards, mainly oranges, and the instal-lation of irrigation systems similar to those he had built in Carson Valley.

He was led to Riverside, the “promised land,” along with more than 100 people from Galesburg, by Sylvanus Harvey Ferris, his deceased brother Olm’s oldest son. Also in this Illinois group, which contributed to the early success of Riverside and earned it the moniker “Inland Empire,” was George Sr.’s third-oldest son (and George’s older brother), Ben. Later, George Sr. told a Galesburg Evening Mail reporter, “In 1882, we went to Riverside; and we were among the early settlers and founders of that place” (GEM 1893).

The Ferrises were as signifi cant in making that part of California the citrus capital of the West as they were in the founding of Galesburg and Knox College in Illinois. Their impact on Riverside is revealed in the biog-raphy of Sylvanus Harvey in Riverside County History. It reads,

Sylvanus H. Ferris, one of the pioneers of Riverside, was a man of great prominence, and his home the center of much hospitality. He permanently settled in Riverside in 1881 and built his residence, one of the area’s most substantial homes, in 1882. He brought with him quality trees from Il-linois and New York and raised high-grade oranges. In ad-dition to Riverside, he owned orange properties in Orange and San Bernardino counties, and had a cottage at Laguna Beach and a ranch in San Antonio Canyon. A very public spirited man, Ferris worked hard to secure the Santa Fe Railroad into Riverside, and was director and manager of the Newton Railroad. (included in Ferris 2006)

How much correspondence between the two Georges went on during this time in 1882 can only be guessed. Neither was averse to letter writing and both were eloquent with words. It is likely that several written missives about what father and son were doing fl ew between them. Symbolic of his admiration for his father, Ferris’s signature began to look almost identical to George Sr.’s.

All by himself in the isolated setting of West Virginia, the unemployed but resilient Ferris needed to do some soul-searching. It was a defi ning


moment for him. All his life he had been surrounded by strong, powerful, successful male role models and mentors. Their advice, experiences, and ad-ventures had to have been on his mind. What lessons could be learned from them? For example, faced with a similar set of circumstances, what actions would be taken by the likes of his father, grandfather, brother-in-law Fred Dangberg, or uncle Nathan “Olm” Ferris, and maybe his great-grandfather, and even the family progenitor, Jeffrey Ferris? To start, all were believers in hard work and honesty, being frugal with one’s money, and taking well-calculated risks. George was not averse to any of those beliefs.

After weeks of pondering, Ferris fi nally concluded it was time to refocus the direction of his engineering career. For a long time, his primary interest had been bridges and bridge building. It was time to follow that aspira-tion. Always driven to succeed by doing grand things, Ferris thought about opening his own engineering company, an ambitious goal for a young man just starting out and without any money. But he was sure he could get as-sistance from either his father or Dangberg. First, though, he needed some bridge design and building experience, and a client base.

To do that, in early 1883 Ferris secured a position as assistant engineer with the Louisville Bridge and Iron Company (LB&IC) in Louisville, Ken-tucky, to work on bridge design and construction. The few months between his Queen City and Louisville employment would be the only time in his engineering career that the self-reliant Ferris was jobless.

LB&IC was a division of the Louisville and Nashville (L&N) Rail-road. The L&N had previously bought out the St. Louis and Southeastern Railroad, which owned the St. Louis (Eads) Bridge over the Mississippi River, and renamed that section the Henderson Division. Then, in the late 1870s, it also secured control of the Henderson Bridge Company, which had been issued a charter in 1872 to construct a huge bridge, the Hender-son Bridge, over the Ohio River between Evansville, Indiana, and Hender-son, Kentucky.

Three Musketeers

Around the time Ferris accepted his job with LB&IC, his best friend from RPI, Gus Kaufman, was working for the Pittsburgh and Western Railroad Company (P&WRC). Kaufman beat Ferris to the draw when, on a shoe-string budget, he took the plunge and started his own consulting engineer-ing fi rm in Pittsburgh. In his favor, P&WRC had agreed to retain Kaufman as a consultant for some of its projects. One of his fi rst assignments was designing and building four miles of railroad, including a 3,000-foot-long tunnel, through Pittsburgh. But Kaufman, like Ferris, wanted to get into en-gineering big bridges. In that arena, he was only able to secure commissions for a few small bridges. His biggest was a medium-span structure across the Allegheny River at Foxburg, Pennsylvania.

At LB&IC, Ferris encountered another one of his old RPI classmates, Frank Osborn, who had been with the company since his graduation in


1880. In 1881, Osborn began working on designs for L&N’s super-long Henderson Bridge. When they were reunited at LB&IC, little did Ferris and Osborn know how closely their work and lives would soon interweave. Along with Kaufman, Osborn and Ferris had been like the Three Muske-teers at RPI.

By 1883, Osborn, the oldest member of the RPI triad by two years, had been elevated to senior assistant engineer at LB&IC. In effect, he was Ferris’s new boss. He had married less than a year after he left Rensse-laer, but he and his wife Annie had yet to have children. So, when Ferris showed up in Louisville, Frank and Annie most likely socialized with him and invited the talkative bachelor over for a decent home-cooked meal every so often.

Louisville, with its population pushing 150,000 in 1882, had grown rapidly in recent years. Although no New York City, more was happening there than in Charleston and Queen City, West Virginia—not the least of which were national events like the Kentucky Derby. After it was fi rst run on May 17, 1875, the Derby became a spectacular annual event that drew large crowds from everywhere, including attractive young ladies in the lat-est fashions. Ferris himself was fast developing a taste for fi ne clothes. The Derby was only one of many Louisville events that brought out interesting people. All in all, it was a good time to be an upward-moving young bach-elor in Louisville.

Ferris’s fi rst weeks at LB&IC were confi ned to offi ce work until con-struction of the Henderson Bridge across the formidable Ohio began. In August 1883, Ferris was sent to a sister group, the Henderson Bridge Com-pany, where he went into the fi eld to supervise construction of the bridge’s concrete foundations, which were massive pneumatic caissons sunk deep below the river’s water surface, down to solid bearing. Unfortunately, “His work was very dangerous and so wearing on his constitution that he was compelled to resign his position as resident assistant engineer, but was re-tained by the company and given charge of the construction of the super-structure” (Jones 1984).

The sinking of deep caissons for bridge construction was indeed ex-ceedingly hazardous in the late nineteenth century. The caisson foundations for the Henderson Bridge fi t into that category. Workers going below water in pressurized compartments exposed them to the crippling “caisson sick-ness,” a diver’s malady also known as “the bends.” The fi rst notable cases of this phenomenon had occurred during the construction of the 1874 Eads Bridge in St. Louis, designed by the daring Mississippi River underwater scavenger and bridge builder James B. Eads (1820–1887). At least 15 of his men died from it and dozens more experienced permanent damage from its devastating effects.

During the foundation phase of constructing the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, Washington Roebling contracted the bends by going deep below the Hudson River’s surface too many times. It crippled and incapacitated him to the point that he had to spend the remainder of the project confi ned to an apartment overlooking the construction site. His


instructions were carried back and forth to workers by his stalwart wife, Emily. Indeed, without her assistance and savvy, Roebling would not have been able to com-plete his father’s masterpiece. Many contended that Emily was as much the “chief engineer of the construc-tion” on the project as her husband.

Although the damage to Ferris’s health did not reach the proportions of Roebling’s, it was still com-promised. Even so, because of his (albeit brief) work on the Henderson foundations, Ferris achieved a reputation for concrete work under heavy pressure in pneumatic caissons.

When the record-setting Brooklyn Bridge was offi cially opened in May, 1883, RPI graduates everywhere looked upon the accomplishment with great pride. Not only had one of their own been the chief engineer respon-sible for its completion, several other RPI-graduated engineers had worked on it from start to fi nish. It was a proud day for those like Ferris, Osborn, and Kaufman who called Rensselaer their alma mater.

After his stint with the Henderson Bridge foundations, Ferris was as-signed to work on the bridge’s superstructure once its steel superstructure phase was underway. In May 1884, when shop fabrication of its structural steel and iron members began, he went to work for the Union Iron Mills (UIM) in Pittsburgh, one of Andrew Carnegie’s plants, “to inspect iron and steel for the Henderson Bridge superstructure” (Nason 1887). This UIM as-signment lasted until 1885, when the bridge’s superstructure was completed.

With a length of 27,995 feet, counting its two approaches, the tall Henderson Bridge was four and a half times longer than the 5,989-foot-long Brooklyn Bridge. Its longest clear span was 525 feet. Even though that

The Henderson Bridge over the Ohio River between Kentucky and Indi-ana. This record-setting structure was the fi rst major bridge on which Ferris worked as an engineer.

Source: Courtesy of Kentucky Historical Society.


made it the longest trestle span in the world at the time, it was considerably shorter than the clear span of Brooklyn’s great suspension bridge, which was 1,596 feet. In any case, many considered the $2 million, record-set-ting Henderson structure a thing of beauty on opening day, July 13, 1885. When the fi rst train crossed, it was a cause for an enormous celebration. Approximately 12,000 people witnessed the crossing and enjoyed a spec-tacular fi reworks display to honor the historic event. As with the Brooklyn Bridge, several RPI graduates, including Osborn and Ferris, played a big part in the Henderson Bridge’s engineering, construction, and its successful completion.

The colossal bridge allowed the trip between St. Louis, Missouri, and Nashville, Tennessee, to be made in less than 12 hours, and between Nash-ville and Chicago in only 16 hours. Both of these routes had to go through Henderson and over its great bridge, making the Henderson Division of the L&N the most profi table in its system. The original 1885 bridge faithfully spanned the waters of the Ohio for 47 years before it was replaced by to-day’s double-tracked structure, completed in December 1932.

Working on the Henderson Bridge was Ferris’s fi rst taste of involvement in a major, record-setting engineering project. It would not be his last or his most spectacular. The Henderson project changed Ferris, though. It added to his swagger. Afterward, he was no longer the ranch kid from Nevada with an engineering degree; he was a seasoned professional—a respected engineer on the rise.

Once the Ohio River bridge project was completed, both Ferris and Osborn changed jobs. Osborn left LB&IC to become assistant principal engineer with Keystone Bridge Company, another Carnegie operation. Ferris went with the Kentucky and Indiana Bridge Company in Louis-ville, Kentucky, “to take charge of testing and inspection of iron and steel procured from Pittsburgh steel mills for use in bridge superstructures” (Nason 1887).

By the mid-1880s, Ferris was becoming a recognized expert on the properties of structural steel and its potential for use in bridges and other large structures. Familiar with the processes involved in the manufacture, fabrication, and installation of the rapidly emerging new structural mate-rial, he recognized the need for quality control and engineering inspection to ensure a good product. He saw the opportunity for a new business, one that needed to be located in the heart of the American steel industry, Pitts-burgh, where Carnegie Steel reigned as king of all steel mills.

In addition to the Henderson structure, Carnegie’s company furnished the structural steel for two other nineteenth-century American landmarks, the 6,442-foot-long Eads Bridge in St. Louis and the Home Insurance Build-ing in Chicago, the world’s fi rst skyscraper. Built in 1885, the latter used considerable steel in its framework. With Andrew Carnegie, the world’s second richest man, aggressively promoting the use of steel in large struc-tures, opportunities for those knowledgeable about the product’s character-istics were extremely promising.


* * *

In 1886, 27-year-old George Ferris founded G. W. G. Ferris and Company, Consulting and Inspecting Engineers, in Pittsburgh, mainly to test and in-spect steel and other metals for use in large structures. Employing teams of engineers and technicians, the company conducted extensive mill and fac-tory work, inspections, and testing throughout the country. It also reviewed construction documents and contractor shop drawings. Among Ferris’s em-ployees were a number of RPI graduates, not only because he was familiar with the caliber of their education but also because they were the best in the country when it came to applying new technology.

Ferris needed considerable start-up money to set up such an opera-tion and keep it running in its early stages. How could a young engineer like Ferris do it? He had what most of his contemporaries did not—a unique ability to convince fi nancial institutions of the merits of his plans and ideas. Also, he had access to people with deep pockets, not the least being his father and brothers-in-law, particularly the land and cattle baron Fred Dangberg. How much fi nancial aid, if any, he received from them for his consulting business is not recorded, although a number of sources mention he had interest-bearing notes payable with them from time to time.

Ferris’s fi rst partner in his consulting engineering operation, James C. Hallsted, was a New York native and an 1883 graduate of RPI. He was nine months younger than Ferris but two years behind him in college. If they had interacted at RPI, it would have been upper classman–lower class-man in nature. The professional relationship that developed between the two began postgraduation, either at LB&IC or UIM, or both, where they were employed.

The fi rst offi ce of G. W. G. Ferris and Company was located at 553 Grant Street, Suite 25, in Pittsburgh. In 1888, it moved to larger quarters at 91 Fifth Avenue, where it remained until 1896. Business became so good that the Ferris company opened satellite offi ces around the country in cities like Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago. While primarily occupied with the organization and administration of his company, as it prospered George turned his attention to the promoting and fi nancing of large-scale engineer-ing projects.

Among Ferris’s most experienced and qualifi ed engineers in the begin-ning was his RPI pal, Frank Osborn, who had been working for the Key-stone Bridge Company in Pittsburgh. A year after Ferris opened his own consulting company, Osborn joined him, bringing with him his immense bridge engineering experience and talent. But after only a couple of years with Ferris, Osborn left in 1889 to become chief engineer for the King Bridge Company of Cleveland, Ohio, where he produced the construction drawings for a large bridge designed by Ferris and company over the Ohio River in Cincinnati. In 1892, Osborn founded his own consulting fi rm, Osborn Engineering Company, in Cleveland.


The Osborn fi rm, which exists today, eventually built a national reputa-tion as leading-edge stadium designers, especially after Frank’s son Kenneth, a 1902 graduate of RPI, joined him in 1911. By the early 1920s, when Frank died, Osborn’s list of sports facility designs was impressive. Among them were Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field, Boston’s Fenway Park, Chicago’s Comiskey Park, Detroit’s Briggs (now Tiger) Stadium, and New York City’s Yankee Stadium. His college stadiums included those at the universities of Ohio State, Purdue, and Minnesota. Of the three RPI musketeers—Ferris, Kauf-man, Osborn—Osborn’s consulting practice was the longest-lasting and most productive.

In the summer of 1887, William F. Gronau (1866–1924), boyish-lookingand newly graduated from RPI, went to work for G. W. G. Ferris and Com-pany. It would be quite a ride for him. Within six short years, while still a less-than-seasoned young engineer in his twenties, he was called upon to play a vital role in the design of Ferris’s giant wheel structure. That heady task would test his abilities to the fullest.

By the time he started working for Ferris, Gronau had had his share of encounters with big-name engineers. Washington Roebling’s son John A. (the second) was in the same graduating class as he at RPI. Gronau had numerous opportunities to meet Washington and other RPI engineers who had worked on the Brooklyn Bridge.

About his early years with Ferris, before his assignment on the history-making giant wheel project, Gronau recalled,

After spending time inspecting bridge materials in bridge shops in Pittsburg [sic], Chicago, Cleveland, Massillon, Mt. Vernon and other places, I entered the Pittsburg [sic]offi ce [headquarters] of the concern in the fall of 1888 as an assistant to Mr. Frank C. Osborn, then a member of the fi rm. In April 1889, I was appointed engineer for the fi rm in charge of design of bridge work. While in that position, I was connected with the design of several bridges across the Ohio River, beside many bridges for the railroads in the south and west. (RPI 1912)

After starting his company, Ferris became more active in the state’s pre-miere engineering association, the Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsylva-nia (ESWP). Among its members were many of the area’s movers and shak-ers, top engineers, and other business leaders. It made an excellent forum for exchanging ideas and meeting the best in the burgeoning steel business. Its frequent attendees included upper management personnel from Carn-egie Steel, and engineering pioneers, not only in steel technology but also in aluminum and other metals. ESWP meetings also provided convenient opportunities for Ferris and Kaufman, who had been active in ESWP since Kaufman formed his bridge design fi rm in 1883, to compare notes about the consulting business. They talked about the future and about the pos-sibility of founding a new fi rm.


The Woman from Ohio

Even though his civil engineering business and the profession consumed much time and energy, Ferris made having a fulfi lling social life a high pri-ority. He began courting an attractive, full-of-life young woman from Can-ton, Ohio, Margaret Ann Beatty. She was as outgoing as he was, and not shy about being the center of attention.

Although no known photograph exists of her, the fact that Margaret was a notably beautiful woman has been confi rmed by numerous newspa-per accounts of the day, including one in The Fort Wayne News, which re-ported, “Mrs. Ferris is a woman of beauty and a decided brunette” (FWN 1897). Their romance blossomed and developed into a full commitment. The two married on September 18, 1886, in a ceremony in her hometown amid colorful trees and dazzling fall foliage. The happy couple took up resi-dence in Allegheny, a suburb of Pittsburgh, about 75 miles from her family in Canton. With a population of 200,000, Pittsburgh was ten times the size of Canton and, even with its dirty, soot-fi lled skies from all its factories and metal mills, Pittsburgh offered gaiety and much to do. It was a great city in which to be young and alive, especially if one liked being around industries that were rapidly transforming America into a powerful industrial nation.

For most of their married life, George and Margaret resided at 204 Arch Street in the fashionable part of town, today known as the North Side of Pittsburgh. It made for a convenient commute to his offi ce, which was just south and across the Allegheny River bridge from Arch Street. Addi-tionally, in the early to mid-1890s the pair set up housekeeping in Chicago, mainly to oversee the construction and operation of the Ferris Wheel. Ferris had to spend much of his time in Pittsburgh during the construction of the Wheel, so he often relied on Margaret to convey his instructions to his em-ployees in Chicago and keep him informed of the Wheel’s progress. In some ways, it resembled the close, dependent relationship Emily and Washing-ton Roebling had had working on the Brooklyn Bridge. From all accounts, Margaret relished the part and put her heart into her assignments.

As the 1880s came to an end, the outlook for the young couple’s future seemed headed along the path of a happy-ever-after fairy tale. The years that followed, however, would present a monumental test for that.


CHAPTER SIX

Building Big Bridges

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

When President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor on October 28, 1886, savvy U.S. civil and struc-

tural engineers, including emerging young engineers like George Ferris, were especially interested in its elaborate internal metal skeleton. It allowed the copper-clad sculpture to stand tall and weather the forces of nature. The statue’s complex framework highlighted the emergence of wrought iron and steel as important construction materials in the design of buildings and other tall structures.

The structural framework, designed by the celebrated French structural engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel—not every American engineer’s favorite practitioner because of his bravado and his downgrading of American ac-complishments—highlighted the versatility of structural metals in produc-ing lightweight edifi ces. The Statue of Liberty, though, was not the only Eiffel-designed iron/steel structure to challenge the respectability of the American engineering community in the later part of the nineteenth cen-tury. The Frenchman had something much taller coming.

Even though Eiffel’s designs were leading-edge, U.S. engineers in the late 1800s had their own structural fi rsts and record-holders. This was es-pecially true in the production of innovative designs for bridges where the structural material of the day—reliable and inexpensive Bessemer-produced steel—was coming on strong. James Eads, for instance, used the new mate-rial effectively in his three-arched masterpiece spanning the Mississippi at St. Louis. So did the Roeblings in the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, the world’s longest suspension bridge.

Civil engineer William Le Baron Jenney (1832–1907), a Civil War hero, had used wrought iron and steel members in the structural framework of the world’s fi rst skyscraper, the Home Insurance Building in Chicago. Rather than using the traditional masonry wall-bearing system, the 180-foot-tall

BUILDING BIG BRIDGES 59

Home Insurance project incorporated a structural frame of iron and steel to carry loads. The members of the frame, originally designed in iron, were changed to steel midway through construction when the Carnegie Steel Company of Pittsburgh convinced Jenney and the building’s owners that it could produce fi rst-class steel beam and column sections. The quality of the steel had to be thoroughly tested and inspected by professional engineers like Ferris.

Jenney alleged that the idea for the building’s framework system came from watching his wife move their wire birdcage around the house while cleaning. This revelation highlighted not only the fact that new structural systems can come from anywhere, but also that the structural metals being introduced in the 1800s were often fi rst used in smaller products like bird-cages and even toys.

Jenney’s Home Insurance structure sparked a never-ending high-rise construction rage around the world, each new building aspiring to be higher than its neighbor. In Ferris’s time, America had title to the world’s tallest building structures, largely because America’s steel industry, espe-cially in Pittsburgh, was setting new guidelines for the industry worldwide. Leading design, testing, and inspecting engineers like Ferris stood at the forefront of ensuring high standards and quality for steel products and procedures.

By the mid to late 1880s, Ferris and those in or associated with G. W. G. Ferris and Company had become recognized experts on the properties of structural steel for bridges and other complex structures. In addition, Ferris was establishing a reputation as an astute businessman, making alliances with powerful consultants in his profession and sometimes even with those who competed directly with him and for his employees.

Principal among these was Robert W. Hunt (1838–1923), both a col-league and an occasional competitor, and later a strong ally. Hunt, a self-educated engineer, was a good friend of Carnegie and a major fi gure in the American steel industry in the latter 1800s and early 1900s. He was instrumental in introducing and promoting the Bessemer process to the steel industry. Holding numerous patents dealing with steel and iron pro-cesses and machinery, in 1860 Hunt established the country’s fi rst analyti-cal laboratory for iron works at the Cambria Iron Company in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and he co-invented automatic rail mills. In 1888, he founded Robert W. Hunt and Company, headquartered in Chicago, hiring a number of Ferris’s engineers. The Hunt fi rm was advertised as being a Bureau of Inspection–Tests and Consultation: Chemical and Physical Laboratories. Its services listed the inspection of rails, fi sh plates, cars, and other railway ma-terial, and boiler and engine tests. It had operations in Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, San Francisco, and London—some of the cities where Ferris also had offi ces. In those cases, he and Hunt often had their offi ces in the same building and shared staffs.

Also, around this same time Ferris reorganized his own engineering fi rm, elevating William Gronau and David McNaugher, an 1885 RPI grad-uate, to partnership level.


As Ferris’s engineering business ventures expanded, he worked even harder and began getting pulled in several different directions. Neverthe-less, his and Margaret’s marriage remained stable and happy, but child-less. However, he received sad news from home in Nevada. On March 20, 1889, his closest-in-age brother Eddie, still a bachelor, died unexpectedly at age 35. Two years earlier, his oldest brother Albert, also not married, had passed away at age 46. These early deaths had to give Ferris pause to refl ect on his own mortality. Perhaps the Ferris boys were burdened with some kind of Carson Valley curse affecting their life spans.

His parents, still living in Riverside, California, continued to be healthy. So did his brother Ben, who resided near them in California. The rest of his siblings in Nevada and Illinois remained in good health, too. Plus, his father was quite spry for a man in his 70s and continued to make business deals, many of them with his son-in-law, Fred Dangberg. George Sr.’s investments in property, orchards, water companies, and railroad lines kept him active. Maybe the bachelor lifestyle of George’s two brothers caused their early de-mise, not the genes they inherited. Regardless, any thoughts the 30-year-old Ferris may have had about curses or dying early quickly evaporated.

Later in 1889, Ferris and his RPI classmate Gus Kaufman formed a bridge-building design fi rm, Ferris, Kaufman and Company (FKC), which complemented the services offered by G. W. G. Ferris and Company. Kauf-man’s old, struggling consulting fi rm became a thing of the past. The only downside of the FKC venture for Ferris was having to assume more than his share of its fi nancial burden to get it up and running. It drained his sav-ings and forced him to borrow money.

Although he did not possess the breadth of business savvy or money sources as Ferris did, Kaufman had his strengths, including important con-tacts like his former employer P&WRC and his older brother Joseph, who headed the Aliquippa Steel Company in Pittsburgh. Their father, Simon Kaufman, an immigrant from Baden, Germany, and a successful Jewish clothier in Pittsburgh, could also open doors for FKC around western Penn-sylvania, eastern Ohio, and West Virginia.

Kaufman also brought to the operation an appealing client list gained through his days of designing bridges while with other companies and when on his own. Like his partner, Kaufman had the distinction of being born on Valentine’s Day (February 14), also in 1859. He was more active than Ferris in engineering societies such as the Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsyl-vania (ESWP), the Rensselaer Society of Engineers (RSE), and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). He also frequently contributed technical papers on bridge engineering and construction to publications produced by these groups. Altogether, the two enterprising young men proved to be a good match, both professionally and socially.

Being the senior partner and front man in FKC allowed Ferris to devote much attention to promoting and fi nancing large-scale engineering projects while keeping reasonably close ties with his original fi rm. It also allowed him to engineer and/or supervise the construction of big bridges, one of his life’s goals. The fi rst of FKC’s major bridge designs included one across the


Allegheny River in Pittsburgh and two across the Ohio River, one in Cin-cinnati and the other in Wheeling, West Virginia.

One cold, dreary day in January 1890, while working in his offi ce, Fer-ris received a surprise visit from a Mr. Bakewell from Nevada. Bakewell represented one of George’s brothers-in-law, Oscar T. Barber, who was also Fred Dangberg’s lawyer. Bakewell, in Pittsburgh on other matters, stopped in to discuss unpaid notes of $3,800 that George had with Barber and Fred Dangberg. Ferris told Bakewell he thought his father intended to pay the notes. In any event, George couldn’t come up with the necessary money at the moment, saying he had “lost $3,000 [$65,000 in 2009 dollars] by a bank failure not long ago” (Letter from Barber to H. Fred Dangberg, Jan. 23, 1890, Riverside, Calif.).

Barber had instructed Bakewell to negotiate with Ferris, consolidate the notes, and reduce the amount due by $800 if George would sign a new note with interest for $3,000. It would be due in two installments—one payment in a year and the remainder in two years. At the conclusion of his encounter with Bakewell, Ferris agreed to Barber’s terms and signed the new note. When he returned to Nevada, Bakewell reported the particu-lars of the meeting to Barber with the comment, “He [George] seemed to be doing a very good business” (Letter from Barber to H. Fred Dangberg, Jan. 23, 1890, Riverside, Calif.).

* * *

Once notifi ed, in the spring of 1890, of their success in securing the Fair, prideful Chicagoans formed the World’s Columbian Exposition Company for building, fi nancing, and running the extravaganza. The prominent Chicago architectural fi rm of Burnham and Root became the project’s lead architect, and one of its partners, New York-born Daniel Burnham, was made head of all design and construction for the event. Tall and hand-some with a copious mustache, Burnham had a commanding presence. With his many successful projects both in the Chicago area and around the nation, Burnham was pleased with himself and his place in the world of design.

Little did George and Margaret Ferris know how much this Chicago celebration overall and Burnham’s dealings would affect their lives and their marriage.

* * *

The fi rst big bridge on which FKC was the engineer-of-record was a multi-span through-truss bridge crossing the Allegheny River along Ninth (Hand) Street in Pittsburgh. Its design was an almost total RPI enterprise. In addi-tion to Ferris and Kaufman, RPI graduates leading the engineering effort were Hallsted, McNaugher, and Gronau.

Ferris’s Ninth Street Bridge had the distinction of being next to two monumental structures designed by two of America’s most well-known


bridge engineers, John Roebling and Gustave Lindenthal (1850–1935). Roebling’s structure on Sixth (St. Clair) Street was an 1859 cable suspension bridge, and Linden-thal’s bridge on Seventh Street was an 1884 eye-bar sus-pension-type structure. Lindenthal called it a “suspended arch bridge” because it used chains instead of cables and because of its unusual web bracing between the chains.

The bridge designed by Ferris replaced one of the nation’s largest wooden covered bridges, a Burr arch-trussed structure built in 1839 using pine timber. Even though the Allegheny’s fast-moving current and winter icing conditions had damaged the wooden bridge’s ma-

sonry piers and abutments, that was not the reason for it being replaced. Rather, its interior dimensions and carrying capacity called for its demise. With the advent of electric railway streetcars in the late 1800s, the structure could not carry the heavier loads required by the new rapid-transit vehicles. Its low deck-to-roof clearance of only 11 feet and its narrow roadway were also problematic.

The Ferris solution reused the covered bridge’s four piers and two abut-ments, with substantial modifi cations, and kept the existing structure in use during new construction, which started in 1889. Because removal of the covered bridge’s roof left it unsound, temporary towers and lateral sup-ports were needed to keep it stable during new construction. As this work was being done, all deteriorated sandstone and lime mortar of the existing piers was replaced and strengthened. These pier bridge supports, which had battered sides, measured 9 feet by 35 feet at their narrowest. Federal navi-gation waterway specifi cations adopted during the bridge’s construction

The Ninth Street Bridge over the Allegheny River in downtown Pitts-burgh (bridge in the center). The record-setting steel-truss bridge structure was the fi rst major bridge on which Ferris’s bridge-designing fi rm, Ferris and Kaufman, was the chief engineer-of-record.

Source: Courtesy of Library and Archives Division, Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania.


also required that the pier tops be raised. Therefore, granite blocks were placed under beam supports, 12 inches high at the center piers and 7 inches high at the adjacent piers.

The new bridge, using Pratt trusses built of riveted steel and wrought iron, with iron or steel stringers, was designed to support the largest rapid-transit cars then in use. An Aveling and Porter 15-ton steam road roller sim-ulated that load. The bridge had four rails to allow for streetcars carrying passengers to travel in both directions at the same time between Allegheny and Pittsburgh. The bridge’s four river spans were 205 feet each, fl anked by side spans at each end of 152.5 feet, for a total length of 1,125 feet.

Local folklore has it that when the covered bridge was being taken down, “[A] violin maker asked to procure wood from the fi rst Hand Street Bridge, speculating that the continual vibration would condition the wood as if it had been played already. He formed three violins from wood chosen from the disassembled wooden structure and was very satisfi ed with the outcome of his handiwork” (Kaufman 1892).

In the mid 1920s, all three bridges—at Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth Streets—were demolished and replaced with larger, stronger eye-bar sus-pension bridges similar to the 1884 one designed by Lindenthal. Currently, the three 1920s structures are known as the “Three Sisters Bridges,” the only trio of nearly identical bridges (as well as the fi rst self-anchored sus-pension spans) built in the United States. They are among the few surviving examples of large eye-bar chain suspension bridges in the country.

Shortly before the Ninth Street Bridge opened, Ferris made a trip to Carson City to attend his parents’ golden wedding anniversary on Septem-ber 30, 1890. George Sr. and Martha came from Riverside, California, for the big shindig, which included festivities and gatherings at the Dangberg home-ranch and at the boyhood home of Ferris. At the time, the house be-longed to George’s youngest sister, Mame, and her family.

It can only be imagined what tales 72-year-old George Sr. might have told his children, grandchildren, and other attendees. He no doubt had sto-ries about growing up in upstate New York and farming the wild prairies of Illinois, about his father’s and grandfather’s exploits, and about his ex-tended trip to the California goldfi elds in 1850. Or perhaps he shared his recent brush with death on a trip back to Illinois and then on to New York. On that trip, the Niagara Falls excursion train he was riding on had a disas-trous wreck 120 miles east of Galesburg, Illinois. There were about 300 ca-sualties, 85 of them deaths. George Sr., whose injuries were not serious, assisted fellow passengers out through car windows to safety. For doing that, the “old man” was hailed as a hero.

Likewise, what Ferris and his siblings discussed can only be surmised, but surely they mentioned the recent passing of their two bachelor broth-ers. They likely talked about what each was doing and the achievements of family members, young and old. And because all of George’s brothers-in-law were older and good providers, discussions of business and politics certainly must have entered the picture.

Of course George, the second-youngest sibling with much to prove, had to tell about his great, soon-to-be-completed bridge over the Allegheny River and about two even bigger ones over the Ohio River, still on the draw-ing boards. The promising picture of his upcoming work load must have helped ease the minds of Dangberg and Barber, who had just extended their business loans to him for a couple more years.

Always supportive of his namesake’s activities, George Sr. must have beamed with approval on hearing about his son’s big bridge projects and other interesting work. Ferris himself found his trip back to Nevada im-mensely worthwhile. He told a Virginia Nevada reporter that “He [Fer-ris] had a warm spot in his heart for the old home and its people, and afterwards said those few days spent here, free from all business and cares, renewing old acquaintances and school friends, now grown to be men and women, were the happiest of his life” (Virginia Nevada, Nov. 24, 1896 [Ferris obituary])

All was not without confl ict, though. By the 1890s, Ferris’s oldest sis-ter Maggie, whom he greatly admired (along with her husband Fred), was the wealthiest Ferris family member, largely because of her marriage. Fair, generous, and respected for her opinions, Maggie’s advice was sought as if she were the family matriarch. Whether what happened at George Sr. and Martha’s fi ftieth wedding celebration or at events later were what infl u-enced Maggie’s impression of her younger brother’s wife, Margaret, is not known. Indications are, however, that her lifelong opinion of Margaret was not favorable. According to Maggie’s great-grandson, Steve Achard, “Mag-gie didn’t particularly like or think much of George’s wife” (Interview with Steve Achard, Aug. 22, 2007, San Clemente, Calif.).

On his long trip back to Pittsburgh, Ferris observed a vibrant and changing country. Many developments, both in him and the nation itself, had occurred since his fi rst trip eastward 14 years earlier, when he left home to attend RPI. Back in 1876, he was a raw, eager, 17-year-old college boy looking forward to becoming an engineer and bettering himself. In 1890, he was the head of two successful engineering businesses with many major projects on his horizon.

U.S. rail service in particular had changed greatly. Along the railroad lines were more towns and larger cities. The population had increased nearly 40%, from 46 to 63 million. The nation’s railroad mileage, in-cluding countless leading-edge bridges and other support structures, had tripled from 73,000 to 230,000 miles. The time was right for the emer-gence of someone like Ferris, an engineer highly knowledgeable about the properties of structural steel and its budding potential as a major building material. How promising the future looked for him and other American civil engineers!

Ferris returned to Pittsburgh in time to watch, with considerable pride, the fi rst mass-transit trains successfully cross over his fi rst big bridge, the Ninth Street Bridge. As that was being opened to the public, Ferris’s fi rm FKC was busy overseeing construction of the piers for two other major bridges on which FKC was the chief engineer. They were highway bridges



over the Ohio River, one at Cincinnati and the other at Wheeling, West Virginia. Both were slightly behind schedule, so Ferris took a week off and went to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to unwind. What he did there would later come back to haunt him. Said Ferris,

I was in Atlantic City about one week in September dur-ing the Barring Panic [the 1890 collapse of the Barring Brothers investment banking fi rm in London, a major un-derwriter of U.S. railroad and bridge projects]. I saw on the beach a vertically revolving wheel, which I suppose to be forty or fi fty feet in diameter. I rode the wheel in com-pany with some small children once. I did not know this wheel to be the Somers patent wheel. In fact, I paid so lit-tle attention to it that I don’t even recollect how the thing was propelled. It attracted so little attention in my mind at that time that I didn’t care to take the second ride on the wheel. At the time, I was not interested in any vertical roundabout or vertical swing device. I was in Atlantic City trying to recuperate. (Depositions from the Garden City Observation Wheel Company patent infringement lawsuit, beginning on July 10, 1893. U.S. Circuit Court, Northern District of Illinois, Case 22941: Garden City Observation Wheel Company v. The Ferris Wheel Company. Deposi-tions of George W. G. Ferris, et al.)

The Somers device carried passengers in open-air, park bench-type seats, with everyone looking in the same direction.

Three years after Ferris rode the New Jersey pleasure wheel, the holders of the Somers patent (which in the end proved quite limited in scope) strongly disputed Ferris’s allegations that in no way was he im-pressed or infl uenced by the Atlantic City wheel. They not only suggested that the idea for his great Chicago wheel came from a rigorous study of 50-foot-tall wooden Somers wheel, but also that Ferris copied construc-tion and engineering details of the structure. In reality, the Somers struc-ture at Atlantic City was crudely simple in its construction, having com-pression (not tension) spokes. Both structurally and mechanically, its only substantive resemblance to the 265-foot-tall Ferris steel-tension structure was that both were circular in shape and turned about a raised horizontal axle. Eventually, the courts decided the Ferris–Somers dispute, but the liti-gation efforts that ensued took a major toll on Ferris and his relationship with his wife.

When Ferris returned from his brief vacation to the Atlantic Coast beaches, the stone masonry and concrete foundation work for the Ohio River bridge at Cincinnati (called the Central Bridge, and also known as the Cin-cinnati and Newport Bridge) was rapidly nearing completion. His inspecting and metallurgical engineering fi rm, G. W. G. Ferris and Company, had con-currently completed approving the bridge’s superstructure steel and iron at


one of Carnegie’s mills. All major bridge members were being produced and prepared to be shipped and erected.Kaufman said,

Prior to the construction of this bridge, the highway traffi c between the two cities was prin-cipally accommodated by a ferry company with two large ferry boats. The L&N Bridge, which is supplied with very narrow roadways and sidewalks, accommodated the street car traffi c and a portion of the other highway traffi c, but was not popular on account of its location and

the interruption of highway traffi c during the passage of trains. (Kaufman 1892)

The King Bridge Company of Cleveland, the fi rm Ferris and Kaufman’s RPI friend Osborn was then with, had won the contract to construct the bridge in accordance with the specifi cations prepared by FKC, chief engineers for the Central Railway and Bridge Company, the owners of the Central Bridge. As an employee of the contractor, Osborn did all the detailed calcula-tions and construction drawings, a practice widely in use in bridge construc-tion during the 1800s and early 1900s. The chief engineers, the engineers-of-record, were responsible for the project’s engineering, but the contractor’s engineers had to prepare their own design details and building documents.

Postcard of the Central Bridge over the Ohio River in Cincinnati. Designed by Ferris, the Central was one of the fi rst major “standard” cantilever-truss bridges ever built. In the late 1800s, postcards featuring famous bridges were popular with the public.

Source: Courtesy of Peggy W. Holliday Collection.


An iron and steel cantilever-truss-type bridge structure, the Central had a total length of 2,966 feet. Its superstructure weighed 2,500 tons and was supported by 9 piers, 28 pedestals, and 2 abutments. Its roadway was 24 feet wide in the clear, with two sidewalks each 7 feet wide. The bridge’s two-lane roadway was built with a grated deck that “made a nervous hum-ming noise that could be heard from hundreds of feet away. Its main en-gineering feature was its cantilever span, 520 feet from center to center of piers” (Kaufman 1892).

The Central Bridge opened on September 1, 1891, at a cost of $1.6 mil-lion ($35 million in 2009 dollars). It was among a handful of notable “stan-dard” cantilever truss bridges built at the time, a design that afterward be-came common throughout the world.

The surveyor for the project in charge of establishing its alignment was Luther V. Rice (1861–1927), a newly graduated Cornell University civil en-gineer who later played a prominent role in Ferris’s most history-making engineering project.

By the beginning of the 1890s, Ferris’s businesses were fl ourishing. Es-pecially busy was his operation in Chicago, in large part because of all the construction underway for the Fair’s construction. Erik Larson, in his book about the Columbian World’s Fair, The Devil in the White City, stated that Ferris “possessed the exposition contract to inspect the steel used in the fair’s buildings” (Larson 2003). It was a massive project—building a large, state-of-the-art, modern city, even though a temporary one. If this was true, having the contract to inspect the necessary steel and iron was a lucrative assignment.

More than likely, both Ferris and his colleague/competitor Robert Hunt and their respective companies were heavily involved in overseeing the fabrication, testing, and erection of the Chicago Fair’s steel structures. Both operations were located in the same building, Number 1137 Rook-ery Building, one of the Chicago’s most prestigious addresses. The Rook-ery, designed by none other than the Fair’s lead architect Daniel Burnham, was a modern, multistory, steel-framed structure built on the site of an old water tank. For years the tank structure, which had been converted into the city’s fi rst public library, had attracted hundreds of nesting birds, so people referred to it as “the rookery.” When it was torn down and the 1886 offi ce structure was built in its place, the owners of the building kept the catchy name.

So frequently did Ferris have to travel between Pittsburgh and Chi-cago for his work, he fi nally established a second home in Chicago, at 3100 Groveland Avenue. How much time he and Margaret spent there together and how much in Pittsburgh—and how much alone in either place—can only be surmised. In any case, from comments each made when the Ferris Wheel was unveiled to the public in 1893, their housing and traveling situ-ation had not lessened their passion and love for each other.

Respected and liked by his peers, Ferris was also an offi cer of ESWP, the engineering society of pacesetters; he was elected a director in 1893. On


ESWP’s board with him as its president was Alfred E. Hunt (1855–1899), an 1876 graduate of the Massachu-setts Institute of Technology (MIT). (At the time, MIT was starting to rival RPI in educating numbers of indus-try leaders.) A highly suc-cessful metallurgist-turned-industrialist, Hunt was a pioneer in the production of aluminum. The company he co-founded, the Aluminum Company of America, later shortened to Alcoa, became (and remains) the world’s largest producer of alumi-num. Hunt was fashionable and dapper in his dress, with an impressive mustache, even more so than Ferris—also a typically well-groomed indi-vidual.

Being on the board of ESWP allowed Ferris to regularly mingle with elites

and lions in the engineering profession, men of accomplish-ment and vision who inspired others to greatness. Among them were Hunt; Alfred Noble (1844–1914), the 1896 president of the group and the 1903 president of the ASCE; and George S. Morison (1842–1903), the 1895 president of ASCE and one of the nation’s greatest bridge builders be-tween 1880 and 1900. Both Noble and Morison received presidential appointments to serve on the U.S. Isthmian Canal Commission, which sought to establish a waterway route between the Pacifi c Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. From their efforts, the construction of the Panama Canal eventually resulted.

Although Ferris had engaged in several notable civil engineering projects and had earned a name as an accom-plished engineer in his fi eld, he had yet to achieve national fame, recognition, or celebrity. And, like most engineers, his had not become a household name outside his profession. That would soon change!

Always ambitious and determined, with the bloodline and accomplishments of generations of Ferrises to draw on

The Rookery Building, Chicago.Ferris had his Illinois engineer-ing offi ces in Suite 1137, on the top fl oor, while designing and building the Ferris Wheel, and for years afterward. When Ferris’s partners bought him out in 1896, renaming his engi-neering company Hallsted and McNaugher, they remained in the same offi ce suite. Opened in 1888, the 11-story Rookery was one of the country’s most noteworthy steel-framed struc-tures of the time. It was desig-nated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1975.

Source: Courtesy of Courtesy Chicago Historical Society HABS ILL, 16-CHIG, 31-10.


and the stimulation of leading engineers around him, Ferris likely sensed that his place in the sun was surely likely to come, sooner rather than later. Some incredible engineering achievement had to be in his destiny, a feat so impressive it would bring him enduring fame.

George Ferris was about to realize it in Chicago.


CHAPTER SEVEN

Piercing Challenge

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.

—William Jennings Bryan

As plans got underway in Chicago for the World’s Columbian Exposi-tion to be held in 1893, the engineers and architects of America in-

terested in Exposition matters formed a Saturday Afternoon Club where they discussed engineering and architectural features of the event. At one of these luncheon meetings on a cold, dreary Saturday in early 1891, mostly attended by engineers, the invited speaker was Daniel Burnham, the direc-tor of works and chief of construction for the Chicago Fair.

The group was eager to hear about planning and construction progress and the succulent ins-and-outs of the project to which an insider like Burn-ham would be privy. A number of engineers present were already involved in various aspects of the Fair’s construction work. Consulting engineers like Ferris and his associate Robert Hunt, for instance, were testing and inspect-ing many of the Fair’s structural steel and iron elements and systems. Few in the audience, though, had any real insight into the project’s overall prog-ress or the status of its exhibits.

Anticipation and excitement fi lled the air. Burnham, easily one of Chi-cago’s most well-known architects and the big man of the Fair, was quite a draw as a speaker. However, he quickly damped the gathering’s mood. Arrogant and condescending, he came across quite proud of himself and his architectural accomplishments. He was quick to tell people not to make “little plans” because they did not excite people. Rather than discussing the complex challenges of building an “entire city” within the unbeliev-ably short schedule demanded by the Exposition’s time frame, Burnham surprised everyone. First, he praised the work of the Fair’s architects, even though all the façades of their buildings were fakes. Rather than being white marble, they were stucco over wire mesh, made to look like marble and not built to last. Nonetheless, Burnham said, “The architects of America

PIERCING CHALLENGE 71

had covered themselves with glory and enduring fame by their artistic skill and original designs of mammoth buildings” (Rice 1901).

He then soundly rebuked the nation’s civil engi-neers for failing to rise to the same level of brilliance. With disdain and superiority, he asserted that America’s engineers “had contributed little or nothing either in the way of originating novel features or of showing the pos-sibilities of modern engineering practice in America” (Rice 1901). A tremor of displeasure rolled through the room. Several engineers took great offense; others ac-knowledged that Burnham had made some good points, among them a tall, lean, dare-taking young engineer from Pittsburgh. However, Ferris was “cut to the quick by the truth of these remarks. He registered a vow that he would design and build something which would be a credit to his profession” (Rice 1901).

Burnham was not totally forthright in his condem-nation of U.S. engineers concerning their lack of input to the success of the Fair’s construction. Concentrat-ing on erecting monumental buildings for the White City, the Exposition Committee used up its construc-tion funds showcasing architecture, leaving no money to design and construct an engineering marvel. Clearly, whoever came up with the winning engineering wonder would have to self-fi nance it. They would reap a fi nancial reward only if their invention could be operated at a profi t, which had to be shared with the Exposition Com-mittee. Plus, they would have to demolish it at their own expense. It was little wonder that no engineers stepped forward to take on a risk of those proportions.

Many of the buildings on the Exposition’s main grounds (the White City) featured not only notable architectural features but also certain struc-tural, mechanical, and electrical engineering breakthroughs and advances, contrary to what Burnham was suggesting. Another issue was that the ar-chitects of these edifi ces received handsome remuneration for their work, plus they were not asked to subsidize their design work or wait for pay-ment until their buildings showed a profi t. Nor were they expected to pay for tearing them down once the Fair ended.

Before the Saturday Afternoon Club meeting was over, Burnham threw out a piercing challenge to every engineer in the country, not just those present. He challenged American engineers to build something that would surpass the Eiffel Tower, something that would engage the public spirit and symbolize the Exposition’s desire to emphasize new technology. He said, “Some distinctive feature is needed, something to take a relative position in the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition that was fi lled by the Eiffel Tower at the Paris Exposition” (Rice 1901). But he stressed that the Expo-sition Committee wasn’t interested in a tower, even if considerably taller

Daniel H. Burnham. Director of Works for the 1893 Columbian Ex-position, this prominent Chicagoan and self-important architect chal-lenged American civil engineers to come up with an engineering feat that would rival the Eiffel Tower.

Source: Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.


than Eiffel’s. The French had already built a tower! “Towers were not origi-nal,” said Burnham. “Something novel, original, daring and unique must be designed and built if American engineers are to retain their prestige and standing” (Larson 2003). In his remarks, Burnham failed to mention that for the Paris event Eiffel had received considerable public funding and was given three years to build his structure.

Several people had submitted tall structure proposals to Burnham’s committee, but none was accepted, not even one by Eiffel himself to build a tower several hundred feet taller than his 984-foot-tall tower in Paris (1,056 feet tall today, counting its television tower). When America’s leading engi-neers heard of Eiffel’s proposal, they were outraged that it would even be considered. They joined forces and sent a strong letter to the Fair offi cials. The Chicago Fair was a U.S. event, therefore American—not French— engineering should be highlighted. They, however, had nothing better to offer.

Among those who had submitted a taller-than-the-Eiffel tower proposal was one of America’s most prominent civil engineers, George S. Morison. He organized a group called the American Tower Company, which included notables like himself and Andrew Carnegie, and Carnegie’s Keystone Bridge Company. He indicated his team could build its structural steel tower to the height of 1,120 feet at a cost $1.5 million, on time for the Exposition. Un-fortunately, Morison’s tower did not look signifi cantly different from the existing Eiffel Tower. It appeared to be just a refi ned copy of it, something the Exposition Committee violently opposed. To replicate what French en-gineers had already done would not show the world that the United States had become a world-class, technologically advanced nation.

In his tower proposal, “Morison estimated that 75,000 people a day would go up the tower while the Fair was open, yielding total revenues in the order of $4.0 million. After an early show of interest by fi nanciers, it was clear, however, that Morison and his group could not fi nance the proj-ect” (Griggs 2009). The project died on the drawing board. If it had not, it would have been a dismal failure fi nancially, since often fewer than 75,000 people a day frequented the Fair itself. Typically, only 10% of all attendees could be expected to pay extra money to experience a tower. As an illustra-tion, the Ferris Wheel, the biggest attraction of the Chicago event, aver-aged about 10,000 paying customers a day during its operation. Even on Chicago Day, the Exposition’s busiest day by far, just 34,433 people paid to ride the Wheel. Morison’s team would have been hard-pressed to get back half of its $1.5 million in construction costs, forgetting about operating ex-penses and splitting profi ts with the Exposition Committee.

The situation begged the question: If a group headed by one of Amer-ica’s foremost engineers and involving the second richest man in the world couldn’t put together a U.S. engineering marvel to better France and Eiffel, who could? Also, there was no assurance that if an American engineer’s creation did fulfi ll the committee’s desires, it would be left standing as a monument for all ages, as was Eiffel’s structure. That alone struck many as a deal-killing nonincentive—so much work for so little reward, for such a short period of time, let alone putting one’s reputation on the line.


Among other tower proposals Burnham’s committee rejected was one that featured a 1,000-foot-high center pole. From it, a 3,000-foot-diameter, tent-like structure would be suspended, covering much of the fairgrounds. Two other ludicrous proposals called for a tower 500 feet taller than the Eiffel Tower made entirely of logs, with a log cabin at the top, and for a “Tower of Babel” 40 stories high with a different language spoken on each fl oor. A 450-foot statue of “Freedom Raising the World,” three times the height of the Statue of Liberty, was also proposed, as was an aerial island supported by six gigantic hot-air balloons. Even though the Exposition Committee did not want a tower or something merely tall, at least Mori-son’s proposed structure was well thought out and engineered.

Despite his tower scheme being scrapped, Morison participated in the events of the Columbian Exposition. As one of the leaders in ASCE, in charge of hosting an International Engineering Congress at the Fair, he played a big part in its success. At the Congress, Morison presented a paper on his award-winning Memphis Bridge project. Ferris’s innovative tension-wheel structure, however, received little or no recognition at the engineer-ing event. In contrast, Eiffel and his tower, with its engineering advance-ments, had been widely discussed, and openly praised and honored, at most of the engineering society gatherings at the Paris Fair. Many in America’s engineering community at the time of the Chicago event, it seems, did not rise above pettiness and envy. They were reluctant to recognize and praise fellow engineers, especially those not among their self-anointed elites.

As director of works, Burnham loved the power he wielded as “czar” of the Chicago Fair’s construction. Perhaps it was refreshing for him to stand before the Saturday Afternoon Club early in the 1891 and chide its engineers “for their failure” (Larson 2003). However, his biting words failedto elicit anything outstanding (that was realistic and could be built) from the U.S. engineering community. The absence of an iconic engineering fea-ture for the Exposition grew frustrating. If an engineer capable of eclipsing Eiffel did not step forward with a winning proposal soon, time to build it would run out. So Burnham’s committee began giving up hope of besting the French—something Chicagoans had assured the Columbian site selec-tion committee it would do.

World’s Fairs and Expositions for years had been hit-and-miss affairs—some good, some bad, but none exceptionally spectacular. In 1889, how-ever, the French had done something that startled everyone. The Paris Exposition was a World’s Fair so big, glamorous, and exotic that visitors believed no future exposition could ever surpass it. At its heart stood an amazing skeleton tower of wrought iron that reached higher than any other man-made structure on earth. The tower offered graphic proof that France and its engineers had edged out the United States for dominance in the realm of iron and steel construction, despite undeniable American engineer-ing accomplishments like the Brooklyn Bridge, the longest clear-span bridge in existence.

Without a world-class engineering centerpiece symbolizing American engineering prowess, Chicagoans were rapidly sobering to the fact that they


may have oversold their ability to best the Paris Exposition, no matter how proud Burnham and his associates were of their marvelous White City pal-aces, statuary, refl ective lagoons, and landscaping done by Fredrick Olm-sted, a distant relative of Ferris’s.

Right after the pivotal Burnham luncheon, George Ferris immediately “began casting several things over in his mind. One night at dinner, in the company of a small group of friends, the idea of a great observation wheel came to him, like an inspiration. He rapidly sketched his plans in the rough. The inspiration of the moment was a stroke of genius. The original sketch was so perfect that it was carried out in its entirety; not a single change was made” (Rice 1901).

Ferris imagined a steel vertical tension wheel, unprecedented in size, essentially a gigantic bicycle wheel 250 feet in diameter. Although a single wheel overall, it consisted of two identical, parallel, circular wheels con-nected with struts and cross-bracing. The entire tension-spoke structure re-volved around a forged-steel axle supported on steel space-frame towers. The 32-inch-diameter, 45-ton axle was a masterpiece of American work-manship. With its two immense “spiders” or hubs each weighing 12.5 tons, the shaft assembly weighed a staggering 70 tons. The two outer wheel seg-ments were connected to the axle by a series of 2.5-inch-diameter steel rods that acted as spokes. Thirty-six richly upholstered, enclosed passenger cab-ins the size of rail streetcars and able to carry a total of 2,160 riders were suspended between the two parallel wheel sections at the outer rims. (See detailed description of the Wheel in Appendix C.)

Burnham’s taunting words, “something original, daring and unique is demanded,” stayed in Ferris’s mind as he developed his invention. Ad-ditionally, because of his ancestry, characterized by seven generations of daring Ferrises, voices may have been telling Ferris this was his time in history—his moment for greatness—and that he could indeed surpass the legendary Eiffel. And if what happened to the Frenchman happened to him, his fortune and fame would be assured for posterity

Ferris’s wheel solution was not a half-formed impulse, but rich in detail. He could almost see, touch, and hear it as it circled through the sky. But he would have to act quickly and he would have to invest his entire life’s sav-ings, and then some, before he would see a penny of profi t. That was as-suming he could even receive the concession to build it at the Chicago Fair.

Returning to his home in Pittsburgh fi rst, then going to his offi ce, Ferris called in one of his young partners, William Gronau, and outlined his grand vision. At that meeting, Gronau recalled, “Mr. Ferris unfolded his scheme of building a monster steel wheel 250 feet in diameter, and to be constructed like a bicycle wheel. The vast magnitude of the wheel and its purpose of carrying people admitted of no hasty decision as the idea of being practical. Nothing of the kind had ever been attempted before” (Gronau 1893).

As fascinated as members of his offi ce became over Ferris’s history-making wheel project, none matched the excitement and pride exhibited by his wife, Margaret. Said Gronau when the Wheel made its fi rst revolu-tion, “The fi rst person to congratulate me [for his work on the project]


was Mrs. Ferris, who really went through almost the same mental strain as myself, for she had the success of the wheel very much at heart.” He added, “It is surely a pardonable pride I take in the wheel, because after the plans had been completed, and the wheel was being manufactured, engineers of prominence had predicted failure. The behavior of the wheel shows whose opinion was correct” (Gronau 1893).

After getting Gronau started doing calculations and working on structural details that resulted in fabrication and construction drawings and specifi cations, Ferris set out to secure backers and well-heeled business partners for his invention. Using his talent for persuasiveness and his genius as a businessman and promoter, he cornered several interested listeners. Initially, few felt comfortable joining his team and putting money into such a risky scheme. “He was laughed out of a succession of banks” (Jones 1984). Some people started calling him “the man with wheels in his head” (Snyder 1893). Similarly, many of his peers thought he was wasting his time and money. More than that, he was putting his hard-earned reputa-tion on the line for such a chancy and potentially unap-preciated endeavor. However, Ferris came from a long line of risk-taking pioneers who rarely gave up once fo-cused on a challenge—a trait he inherited. He was on a quest to design and build a structure that would never be forgotten.

Although a highly capable technical engineer, Gronau needed continual guidance and encouragement in his analysis of the Wheel’s stresses and strains. Computing the effects of wind forces, passenger loads, and tem-perature differentials on exposed structural steel members was demanding work. Said Gronau,

The diffi culties encountered may be easily imagined when it is known that I had to constantly bear in mind the easy erection of the material, and to use such various shapes and sections of material as would admit of ready sale to some bridge company in case it is decided to dispose of the wheel after its work at the fair had been accomplished. Frequently I was discouraged and ready to give up. But, through the encouragement of Mr. Ferris, work was always resumed, and fi nally I fi nished the work. (Gronau 1893)

In time, Ferris began assembling a noteworthy collection of “movers and shakers” and fi nancial sources who agreed to participate in his grand plan—after he put up most of the seed money. By summer, rumors circulated that Ferris was planning a great invention in answer to Burnham’s challenge, some kind of giant, revolving, steel contraption. Gronau, however, had not

William F. Gronau. An 1887 graduate of RPI, he worked closely with Fer-ris on the design of the Ferris Wheel. After being trained by Ferris, he co-founded the fi rm of Gray and Gronau, architects and bridge engineers.

Source: Courtesy of Norman Anderson Photo Collection.

quite fi nished his work, so Ferris was not ready to make his formal presen-tation to Burnham and his committee.

Ironically, before Ferris could make his presentation, another observa-tion wheel proposal surfaced in the fall of 1891. Whether infl uenced by hearing about what Ferris was working on, or whether it was purely coin-cidental, H. W. Fowler, a Chicago industrialist with more than 50 patents, submitted an application to build a 250-foot-tall, compression-spoke wheel contrivance that looked like a giant Dutch windmill. Its single wheel, can-tilevered off the side of a tall, narrow, cone-shaped masonry building, car-ried eight modest-sized passenger cabins (some sketches showed 16 cabins). The cabins dangled by their tops from spoke extensions projecting beyond the outer rim of the wheel. The hanging hot-air balloon basket-like cabins would have fl ipped around uncontrollably even in the slightest wind. Burn-ham’s group quickly rejected Fowler’s proposal.

Later, as the Fair was concluding in 1893, Fowler said about his rejec-tion by the Exposition Committee and Ferris’s wheel, “It illustrates the fact that most novel, popular, and useful devices come to the thoughts of many disassociated individuals at about the same time. Don’t understand me as trying to claim any of Mr. Ferris’s honors. While I did plan such a wheel I didn’t build it, and there is a vast difference between a Ferris wheel on paper and a Ferris wheel in actual performance” (Anderson 1992).

Even though the affable Fowler thought his wheel similar to Ferris’s, it differed in many ways. The Fowler support tower was bulky and awkward-looking, and its compression-spoke wheel had questionable structural integ-rity, displaying no real innovation in the art of engineering (other than size). Its minuscule passenger-carrying capacity would have resulted in a fi nancial disaster and it risked the safety of its passengers in the slightest of winds.

In June 1892, Ferris fi nally presented his well-engineered proposal to Burnham’s committee. Its wheel design exhibited a basic form-follows-function solution, not unlike Eiffel’s structure. However, any hopes Ferris may have had of dazzling the committee with something they had never seen before had been compromised by Fowler’s proposal. With the novelty gone, he had to convince the no-nonsense committee that his elegant solu-tion marked a true engineering advancement, just as the Eiffel Tower had. With its riveted wrought-iron members exposed to nature, the tower in Paris symbolized the future and its achievement dared an equal. Ferris had to assure the committee that his steel tension-wheel was its equal (many thought even better).

At fi rst, Ferris’s proposal received mixed reactions. Some thought his wheel looked like a giant spider web, too fl imsy to hold up under Chi-cago’s strong winds, and that Fairgoers would not risk their lives to be el-evated 264 feet above the earth by such a fl imsy-looking machine. Others thought it outlandish, unrealistic, and superfi cial due to its size and pur-pose, “a monstrosity, out of keeping with the dignity of the Exposition” (Rice 1901). That comment raised a few eyebrows. Concessions already approved along the Midway Plaisance where Ferris’s wheel would be sited included carnival-type exhibits such as the “Streets of Cairo,” where Little



Egypt would dance the original “Hootchy-Kootchy.” Plus, nearby and just outside the fair area, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and an array of amuse-ment park rides and devices were underway or planned.

Ultimately, Ferris made enough points to convince the majority of the committee members of the engineering worth of his invention. With great reluctance, they approved his proposal and granted him a concession to build his wheel.

The next day, the committee revoked it.On July 23, 1892, the Chicago Daily Tribune reported,

W. H. Wachter of Brinkley, Arkansas, has an application before the Ways and Means Committee for constructing a monster observation wheel. He proposes to whirl people 220 feet high in swinging baskets and then whirl them down again. Twenty-eight [open-aired] upholstered baskets, swinging on two pivots, will accommodate eight persons each [224 passengers total]. Mr. Wachter thinks he will get the concession and has offered the exposition management a big percentage of the profi ts. (Anderson 1992)

Wachter’s structure, bulkier and 45 feet shorter than Ferris’s, had its two-circle wheel supported by 110-foot-tall solid masonry towers. Its thick and heavy axle had an industrial appearance, like the “product of a black-smith’s forge,” whereas Ferris’s design was an “expressive epigram of the perfection of precision machine work” (Snyder 1893). But more impor-tant, its small passenger-carrying capacity, like Fowler’s wheel, would have rendered it a major failure fi nancially. Even if Wachter could have built his wheel for free and given the Exposition committee all profi ts, the com-mittee’s receipts would have been minuscule compared to what it received from its eventual concession with Ferris. The design of Wachter’s unsafe, open-aired passenger cabins proved to be no selling point, either. The com-mittee turned down his proposal.

Even though he was aware of the Exposition Committee’s fi ckleness and business methods, Ferris was so driven to build his wheel that he never considered throwing in the towel. He went back to his offi ce to regroup; he reconnoitered with his colleagues and supporters and, with encouragement from Margaret, decided to reapply. But this time he brought more detailed drawings and sketches, a better-defi ned fi nancial package, and ready an-swers for the questions and remarks raised at the previous meeting. Also, he made sure every member of Burnham’s group knew who the key mem-bers of his team were.

Indeed, they were impressive—a “royal fl ush” of America’s steel and construction leaders and captains of industry. Included were Robert Hunt, head of the largest steel testing laboratory and engineering inspection fi rms in the world; Julian Kennedy, often referred to as the foremost world authority on steel processing and manufacturing; and Andrew Onderdonk,railroad magnate and contractor who had built major portions of the


Canadian Pacifi c Railway. (Mount Onderdonk in western Canada had been named in his honor.) Plus, he was an alumnus of RPI. From the legal com-munity, Judge William Vincent, former chief justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, was also on Ferris’s team.

In addition to these industry, engineering, and business stalwarts, inves-tors in Ferris’s venture included many nonindustry-related participants, small and large, from around the country. Steve Achard, a great-great-nephew of Ferris, said that his grandmother (George’s sister Maggie’s daughter) told him that the Dangbergs “had money in the Ferris Wheel” (Interview with Steve Achard, Aug. 22, 2007, San Clemente, Calif.). Knowing how often Maggie and her husband Fred had come to Ferris’s rescue in previous times, it is likely their investment was substantial.

In Ferris Wheels: An Illustrated History, Ferris wheel guru Norman D. Anderson wrote, “The summer and fall of 1892 must have been one of the busiest times in George Ferris’s life. As senior partner in two major compa-nies, he had to devote time and energy to their management. Overseeing the design work on the wheel also demanded his attention” (Anderson 1992). Quite an understatement!

In addition to running these engineering fi rms in 1892, Ferris also founded two more companies, the Ferris Wheel Company, incorporated on June 9, and the Pittsburgh Construction Company, incorporated on No-vember 14. The latter constructed the Wheel; the former oversaw construc-tion, and operated and managed it. Stated Anderson, “Although the Ferris Wheel Company had been incorporated, most of the 6,000 shares of the $100 stock had to be sold. And without a concession all of this investment of time and money would be lost. Ferris remained optimistic, the true sign of an entrepreneur” (Anderson 1992).

The fi rst directors of the Ferris Wheel Company were Ferris, Vincent, and H. M. Barry, while the fi rst directors of the Pittsburgh Construction Company were Ferris, Vincent, and Adams Goodwich. Of the $10,000 needed for its incorporation, Ferris contributed $9,800. When the Fer-ris Wheel was in operation at the Fair, Robert Hunt was the Ferris Wheel Company’s president, Onderdonk its treasurer, and Vincent its secretary and attorney.

These activities were not the full extent of Ferris’s pursuits. For years he had been interested in the possibilities of using compressed air instead of solely hydraulic methods in canal locks. He told a Review of Reviews reporter in 1893 that he “had the matter long in mind, and have taken out patents in the principal countries of the world.” Although it was too pre-mature to be defi nitive, he allowed that the engineering principles in these patents could “revolutionize the canal business” (Snyder 1893). In 1892, a New York Times article ran the headline “A New Lock System That Prom-ises Great Results.” The fi rst paragraph of the article read,

G. W. G. Ferris, a mechanical engineer in the Rookery Building in Chicago, is one of the inventors of a canal lock that is expected to revolutionize the canal building


of the world and develop the building of ship canals and to give principal cities of the U.S. direct rapid water transit connection with the Great Lakes and the oceans. The invention had been patented in all the principal countries in the world, and a syndicate is in formation to build a ship canal to connect Lake Erie with Montreal and New York. (NYT 1892)

With all this going on, it boggles the mind that Ferris also found time to sell stock in his new Wheel companies, raise operating capital, oversee the design and construction of his giant Wheel, and prepare for a second presentation to the Exposition committee. He likely adhered to the tenet held by other high achievers of his era, like Ford, Edison, and Carnegie, about surrounding oneself with good people, then giving them freedom and authority to accomplish their assignments.

Ferris’s second meeting with Burnham to obtain a concession from the Exposition’s Board of Directors occurred in mid-November. After reviewing Ferris’s latest plans, sketches, and fi gures, the Fair’s “czar of construction” shook his head and said, “Too fragile! Your wheel is so fl imsy it would col-lapse, and even if it didn’t, the public would be afraid to ride in it” (Jones 1984). Ferris retorted, “You’re an architect, sir, I am an engineer and my wheel represents strictly an engineering problem. The spokes may seem fl imsy, but they are more than strong enough.” As he got ready to leave, he added, “I feel that no man should prejudge another man’s idea unless he

The Ferris Wheel under construction.



knows what he’s talking about.” Burnham stopped him, smiled slightly, and extended his hand, saying, “Let me have your documents, Mr. Ferris. I’ll present them to the Board and do my best to get a concession for the wheel” (Jones 1984). Before long, the concession was granted. This time it was not revoked!

On November 29, 1892, the 33-year-old Ferris signed a formal agree-ment with the World’s Columbian Exposition to construct the greatest wheel ever built. As jubilant as Ferris may have been, his task ahead was daunting. Until then, the tallest wheel built was a 72.5-foot-diameter water wheel on the Isle of Man and the largest tension wheel in history was a 35-foot-diameter wheel in Scotland. “A novelty in the engineering world,” Ferris told reporters (Snyder 1893). But so little time was left; so much of it had been idled away by indecision.

Key elements of the Ferris–Exposition contract specifi ed that the Fer-ris Wheel Company would charge 50 cents for a ride of two revolutions, and that 50% of the gross receipts were to be shared with the Exposition once construction costs were paid for. But there was a caveat: construc-tion costs could not exceed $300,000 dollars. The actual construction did, in fact, exceed that amount. Because construction took place during one of Chicago’s coldest winters—a result of the Exposition Committee’s waffl ing on its decision to grant a concession—building costs reached $362,000 ($8 million in 2009 dollars). The fi nal clause, once the Exposi-tion offi cially closed, was that Ferris had 60 days to run and dismantle his Wheel.

Thus, for Ferris to get out of the red, gross receipts had to reach $425,000. The fi rst $300,000 went to Ferris and the remaining $125,000

Ferris Wheel authorization docu-ment signed by Ferris.



was split two ways, giving him $362,500 to cover his building expenses. The Exposition, for providing the venue, showed a profi t of $62,500 at that level of re-ceipts. (In the end, the Exposition’s profi ts were consid-erably more because the Wheel’s total receipts exceeded three-quarters of a million dollars.

Among Ferris’s most pressing needs was hiring a top-notch, no-nonsense construction superintendent. He thought of Luther Rice, whose work on his Central Bridge in Cincinnati had impressed him, and he immediately con-tacted him by letter, which read:

I have on hand a great project for the World’s Fair in Chicago. I am going to build a vertically revolving wheel 250 feet in diameter. There will be considerable masonry work to be done, and it will have to be done with the greatest of care. After the plant is erected, which will be the fi rst of May, it will require a superin-tendent to operate it for the next six months and, afterwards, a man in charge of the tear-ing down of the plant and building foundations and re-erection at another place. I can certainly offer you employment for at least a year in this capacity and possibly much longer, if you desire it. Please write me upon receipt of this at my Chicago offi ce whether or not I can have your services in this matter. I want you at once if you can come. Please state what salary you desire in this connection. (Letter from Ferris to Luther Rice, Dec. 12, 1892, Chicago, Ill.)

Rice was an assistant engineer with the Union Depot and Tunnel Com-pany in St. Louis when the letter came; he quickly accepted Ferris’s offer. He arrived in Chicago before the year was out. Rice stayed involved with the Wheel until 1903, longer than anyone else, even the inventor himself.

It took the Exposition’s Board of Directors until December 16, 1892, to actually issue Ferris an offi cial concession to proceed with his project. By then, the opening of the Fair was less than four months away. In that time, Ferris had to raise nearly $400,000; locate, fabricate, and assemble 2,000 tons of material; and build immense foundations and support towers. Most said it couldn’t be done. Indeed, it could not, but Ferris did get it done in six months.

In securing the steel and iron parts needed, Ferris had to face two im-mediate and diffi cult facts. First, the sale of shares in his wheel company was sluggish, so money was slow coming in. Ferris had to use his personal credit to begin placing orders. According to Rice, the other problem was,

Luther V. Rice, the engineer who served as superintendent of con-struction and operation of the Ferris Wheel. He was associated with the Wheel longer than any other person, even Ferris.



“The mills, machine and bridge shops over the country were full to overfl owing with orders.” Crucial in dealing with this situation was

[…] Mr. Ferris’s intimate knowledge of the mills and machine shops throughout the country, gained in his business as a bridge builder and inspector.… Since no one shop could begin to do all the work,

contracts were let to a dozen different fi rms, each being chosen because of some peculiar fi tness for the work en-trusted to it. The fi rm of G. W. G. Ferris and Company was called upon for an army of trained inspectors, who rigidly examined all work in the different shops. Absolute preci-sion was necessary, as few parts could be put together until they were upon the ground [at the Chicago fairgrounds], and an error of the smallest fraction of an inch might be fatal. (Rice 1901)

Scaffolding employed in the erection of the Wheel, using $12,000 (in 1893 dollars) worth of lumber.



After major elements of the wheel were manufac-tured in Cleveland and Youngstown, Ohio, and in Pitts-burgh and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, they were shipped to Detroit, Michigan. There, certain components were assembled and then everything was loaded onto 150 railroad cars and transported to Chicago in March 1893, where construction of the Wheel’s foundations and support system was frantically underway.

When Rice began excavating for the Wheel’s massive foundation in January 1893, Chicago was experiencing one of the most brutally cold win-ters in Midwest history, with daily temperatures often well below freezing. Said Rice,

The frost at the Wheel site was three feet deep; the quicksand was 20 feet in depth and saturated with water. All this had to be excavated, and a solid concrete monolith, interspersed with steel beams resting on piles driven through blue clay to hardpan, 32 feet from the surface, was built to get a secure foundation for the towers. Pumps were kept running night and day to keep out the water, and live steam had to be used to thaw the sand and broken stone. (Rice 1901)

At the same time, work was being done on the wheel structure’s base, and construction of the Wheel’s power plant—two 1,000-horsepower steam engines (one of them a backup engine)—was underway. A Westinghouse air brake was included within the plant, and the boilers for the engines were more than 700 feet away and outside the fairgrounds. Steam from the boilers was supplied via an underground, 10-inch-diameter wrought-iron

The 45-ton axle of the Ferris Wheel, the largest piece of steel ever forged at the time.



pipe; a second underground pipe carried the exhaust steam back.

After the foundation was completed, the two parallel steel-framed wheel support towers were erected, the fi rst being completed on March 20, 1893. Once both towers were fi nished, the wheel’s 70-ton axle assembly was raised 140 feet and fastened to the tops of two steel-truss frame support towers. After that, the wheel spokes and rims were attached and the rest of the Wheel was assembled.

By the fi rst of June, the Wheel’s structure was es-sentially complete, minus passenger cars. It rested on and was solidly con-nected to its frame supports. Standing 265 feet high above the Midway and weighing 2,000 tons, this Goliath towered over everything around and was visible for miles. But would it work as designed? Would its steam engine even be able to turn such a colossal piece of machinery? And if it did, would the wheel distort from a circular to an elliptical shape, as many experts had predicted? It was time for a test run.

Tied up in Pittsburgh on numerous pressing issues—among them fi -nalizing the fi ne points for funding and operating his Wheel, working out fi nancing and engineering details for his proposed giant bridge over the Ohio River, and securing agreements for his newly patented compressed-air design for canal locks, along with lining up enough work for his two engi-neering fi rms to survive a major slowdown should the nation’s impending recession reach the proportions predicted—Ferris had his hands full. For

The power plant (engines) of the Ferris Wheel. The bottom of two of the Wheel’s passenger cabins are visible in the upper part of the pho-tograph. The mustached young man shown in the center rear is believed to be George Ferris, Jr.



the fi nal workings of his mighty Wheel project in Chicago, he had to fully depend and rely on his young partner William Gronau, his wife Margaret, and his on-site job superintendent Luther Rice.

Kept informed on construction progress through a stream of telegrams and letters between himself and Rice, Ferris was eager to check out the Wheel’s ability to move. Rice was told to test it immediately after someone from Ferris’s offi ce completed a fi nal inspection of the structure. Once that was done, Rice said, “Mr. Ferris gave me instructions to turn the Wheel or tear it off the towers” (Rice 1901).

To make the Wheel’s fi nal structural inspection and witness its fi rst revolution, Ferris sent his partner William Gronau from his Pittsburgh of-fi ce to Chicago. Gronau had done most of the structural calculations and had overseen preparation of the drawings for it. What a good experience for a young designer! In essence, Ferris’s directive was “Go stand under the structure you designed as its supports are removed. If it stands up, fi ne; if not, well, back to the drawing board—if you survive.” Said Gronau, “It was a very trying moment for me when the superintendent [Rice] said ev-erything was in readiness to start. I did not trust myself to speak, so merely nodded to start. Although I was very anxious to know the results, I would have gladly asserted to postpone the trial” (Anderson 1992).

The test was a resounding success. Rice informed Ferris that the Wheel stayed perfectly round without any distortions, and moved effortlessly and smoothly. On June 10, Ferris wired back to Rice, “Your telegram stating that the fi rst revolution of the Wheel had been made last night at six o’clock and the same was successful in every way has caused great joy in this entire com-pany. I wish to congratulate you in all respects in this matter and ask that you rush the putting in of cars, working day and night” (Anderson 1992).

Next came a trial run with six passenger cabins installed. The Wheel had not yet been completely adjusted, but Rice “wished to make one trip around to see how the Wheel would act [with cabins attached]. Mrs. Fer-ris, who had cheered her husband in the darkest hours of the enterprise and had given many words of encouragement to the men in charge of the construction work, was present, and bravely determined to make the fi rst trip. She did not falter one moment, nor did she show one sign of fear while making that perilous trip” (Rice 1901).

This trial run was made on a beautiful, clear Sunday, on June 11. Join-ing Margaret were Rice, Gronau, a few other Ferris employees, and the chief bridge engineer for the city of Chicago with his wife and daughter. The nervous Gronau, who had been anxious just watching the wheel turn without passengers a few days earlier, was soothed to be in the cabin with both Mrs. Ferris and Rice. Surely, nothing bad could happen with them onboard. However, as the Wheel began to revolve, their cabin made a “crunching noise” as it turned on its bearings, a sound “not pleasant to hear” (Gronau 1893).

Earlier, Margaret had told her husband in Pittsburgh that she would wire him as soon as her ride was over. He eagerly waited for word from her.


CHAPTER EIGHT

Incredible Wheel

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

—Aristotle

The test of the Wheel with six passenger cabins was a complete success. After the initial squeaks and groans ceased, as fi lms of rust and layers

of dust were ground off bearings and moving parts, the Wheel’s movement was surprisingly quiet and smooth. Even the apprehensive Gronau’s fears evaporated. He said, “Not a single mishap of any kind occurred in our trip, and all expressed themselves as well pleased and much surprised at the smoothness of the motion of the wheel. When our car was at the ex-treme top, 264 feet above ground, congratulations were in order, and Mrs. Ferris stood on a chair and cheered. The view was so grand that all timid-ity left me. I could do nothing but admire the great spectacle before us” (Gronau 1893).

Upon her return to earth, Margaret wired the particulars of the ride to her husband, and Ferris immediately telegraphed back, “God Bless you, my dear” (Rice 1901).

Although much needed to be done before the next run of the Wheel—a special preview for the local press on June 16—the team tackled it with great enthusiasm because the two test runs had been so successful. By the 16th, 30 more cabins needed to be installed and more than 3,000 electric lights installed on the wheel and its support towers. After the media run came preparations for the grand opening itself, only fi ve days later. In addi-tion to fi ne-tuning the Wheel, all construction debris and materials had to be removed and cleaned up. Plus, Rice had to deal with a dispute about the fence around the facility.

Burnham had once again become a thorn in Ferris’s side. He was bully-ing Rice to put up an open fence. Rice wired Ferris, “Burnham insists upon an open fence and wants it set back several feet from the lot line. Wire me at once what to do” (Anderson 1992). Ferris fi red back, “Telegram in

INCREDIBLE WHEEL 87

regard to fence received. In accordance with my view of it, Burnham nor any one else has any right to dic-tate whether we shall have a closed or open fence, any more than from an artistic stand point. We must have a closed fence at least eight feet high and it must be made in such a way that it will not detract from the appear-ance of other concessions and grounds generally” (Tele-gram from Ferris to L. V. Rice, Jun. 14, 1893, Pittsburg, Pa.) An eight-foot closed fence was built.

Although only 30 of the 36 passenger cabins had been mounted (many without windows) by the 16th, Rice decided to go ahead and give the media a special preview ride anyway. Boxes of cigars and bottles of champagne were loaded in a couple of the cabins and more than four dozen reporters clambered onboard. Around 6:00 p.m., the Wheel began moving. Riding along as one of the guides in the fi rst cabin was Margaret Ferris, “dressed in a dainty gown of black, trimmed with gold” (PCG 1893). When her cabin reached its apex, for the second time in fi ve days she stood on a chair—this time toasting with a glass of champagne.

A reporter for the Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette wrote,

The little woman looked wonderfully pretty. Her eyes shone with the light of love and wifely pride. She smiled sweetly at those in the car beneath her and they cheered wildly for her and her husband. She said softly as she made the toast, ‘To the health of my husband and the suc-cess of the Ferris Wheel.’ All in the two cars stood and gave three cheers to the inventor and drank to the health

The Ferris Wheel lighted at night with more than 3,000 incandescent lights.



of his pretty wife. She wasn’t a bit afraid as she stood there, and that alone shows the immense amount of faith she must have in George W. G. Ferris, both as a husband and mechanical engi-neer. Her black eyes sparkled deliciously as she made the toast and the bright color shown in her cheeks and the mist-laden wind played ten-derly with her dark curls. (PCG 1893)

The reporter went on to describe the view, saying,

Looking to the north and west the guests saw the great majestic city [Chicago] lying beneath them shimmering in the rays of the setting sun. The ever-present pall of smoke hung low over the spires and housetops but was slowly receding before the soft evening breeze. Directly beneath was the panorama of the Midway Plaisance, teeming with activity. To the east was the wonderful city of glistening palaces [the White City], whose shadows stretched far out into the heaving waters. [The reporter then praised the Ferris Wheel as being the] marvelous mechanism by which this great picture was disclosed to men. (PCG 1893)

This publicity set the stage for the gala public opening on Wednesday, June 21. Special invitations had been sent earlier to thousands of VIPs from a list approved by Ferris and the offi cers of his Wheel company. Invitees in-cluded local dignitaries, Exposition offi cials, anyone who owned shares in the company, and important friends and relatives. High on the list of hon-ored guests was Mr. and Mrs. H. F. Dangberg (Ferris’s sister Maggie and her

Passengers’ view through the Ferris Wheel’s structural framework, over-looking the surrounding countryside. Panoramas never before imagined were viewed from the Wheel.


INCREDIBLE WHEEL 89

husband Fred). Their engraved invitation read, “The honor of your presence is requested by the Board of Directors at the formal opening of the Ferris Wheel. Wednesday, the twenty-fi rst of June, at three o’clock, p.m.” (Jones 1984).

Margaret sent invitations to her widowed mother in Ohio and her two sisters and their husbands. Ferris invited his parents, and his siblings and their families. Because his father’s brothers and sisters were deceased, Fer-ris sent notices to a number of his father’s favorite nieces and nephews. From Nevada and California, all but the Barbers planned to come. Ferris’s brother-in-law Oscar Barber (never a fan of Ferris, possibly because of his resentment about his tardiness in repaying loans) gave his reasons in a May 21 letter to Maggie’s son, Fred Dangberg Jr. He wrote, “Everyone is talking about going to the ‘big show’ in Chicago, but the Barbers will not make it. Money is tight and there are more pressing matters to attend to here” (Let-ter from Barber to Fred Dangberg, Jr., May 21, 1893, Riverside, Calif.). What an extraordinary, historic event they missed!

Grand Opening

Right after noon on the day before the grand opening, “[A] big black cloud appeared and the rain came down in a perfect deluge. It was estimated there were about 75,000 people on the grounds,” reported the Titusville Morn-ing Herald (TMH 1893a). They had to run for cover. When the rain didn’t let up all night, people feared it might dampen the success of the Wheel’s debut. Thousands had planned to attend.

By the next morning, though, the skies had cleared and the sun was shining brightly. But umbrellas were still recommended, to block out the intense sun. The Titusville Morning Herald reported, “The atmosphere at the White City today [June 21] reminded one strongly of the steam room in the Turkish bath. There was scarcely a breath of air stirring. It was cool and pleasant along the shore of the lake, however, and many sought comfort there. But the heat did not drive visitors from the fair. People kept coming all afternoon. The total attendance for the day will not be far from 150,000” (TMH 1893b). Many were drawn by the opening ceremonies of Ferris’s Wheel. They were curious to see whether such a huge machine could, in-deed, revolve without collapsing. Others simply came to take a spin on it.

A June 21 front-page story in the New York Times read,

A Great Rush to Chicago: Railroads have all they can do to the handle the traffi c. Strangers are pouring into the city [Chicago] by the thousands from every direction, and so great is the rush to the World’s Fair that while in some cases the baggage department forces have been increased threefold and baggage room in proportion, it is as much as the roads can do to handle the enormous traffi c. A dis-tinct feature is the tremendous rush of European traffi c. (NYT 1893)


Many of these foreign visitors arrived to see the great Wheel.

For its debut set for 3:00 p.m., a modest, temporary wooden platform was set up west of its mighty steel base. Shortly after the hour, a score of men took their seats on the dais. The tall, slender man in the middle was whispered to be the magnifi cent machine’s inventor, George W. G. Ferris. In an article titled “In an Endless

Circle,” the Chicago Tribune described him as being “[A] modest young man in a gray suit with a drooping mustache covering his determined mouth” (CT 1893a). In his lapel, Ferris wore a pink carnation.

Not discouraged by the sweltering heat, a large audience (of “fully 2,000,” according to reports) gathered, many of them notables and inter-national offi cials. Swinging in a car 150 feet in the air, the Iowa State band was lustily playing “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.” From every vantage, the Stars and Stripes waved. Each of the Wheel’s 36 cars was hung with pa-triotic bunting. The entire Plaisance was crowded with people looking up-ward at the gigantic, cobweb-like steel Wheel. “From the windows in Cairo Street, Arabs and dancing girls peered curiously out and representatives of twenty nations gazed with wonder at the completed triumph of American engineering” (CT 1893a).

Sitting next to Ferris at the center of the speaker’s stand were the of-fi cers of the Ferris Wheel Company: Hunt, Vincent, and Onderdonk. Next to them sat several dignitaries, including offi cials of the Exposition minusBurnham. Also on the platform was Ferris’s faithful construction superin-tendent, Luther Rice. Ferris Wheel Company President Hunt, who was the 1892 national president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the fi rst engineer to be awarded an honorary doctorate degree from RPI, served as the master of ceremonies for the day’s events. As a highly respected member of the U.S. engineering profession and well-known in-

Passengers’ view from Ferris Wheel, at mid-height, onto the 1893 Chi-cago fairgrounds. The tops of the palatial buildings of the White City are visible in the background.


INCREDIBLE WHEEL 91

ternationally, what Hunt had to say about Ferris and his accomplishment meant something.

At 3:30 p.m., Hunt rapped for order. He briefl y but eloquently dis-cussed what it took to complete the engineering wonder towering above them—the remarkable Ferris Wheel. With all the restrictions placed on the enterprise, no one but Ferris could have built such an incredible structure and machine in so short a time. To conceive of such an intricate tension wheel and develop the necessary, untried methods for calculating and prov-ing its stresses required great creativity and superior engineering skills.

To loud applause, Hunt introduced Ferris. The Chicago Tribune re-ported, “The inventor, with graceful modesty, outlined the progress of his great work, ascribing most of the credit to the unwavering encouragement and faith of his wife” (CT 1893a). Ferris also praised the talents of his asso-ciates and thanked all those who had aided him fi nancially and otherwise. He elicited laughter from the crowd when, after turning and motioning to the Wheel, he said he had fi nally gotten “the wheels out of his head”—a ref-erence to critics who had said he was “the man with wheels in his head.”

Ferris expressed hope that

… the giant wheel might be thought worthy to stand as a representative of the skill and daring of American engineers and he dedicated the completed work to the profession of which he is a member. Mr. Ferris was greeted with applause after he had fi nished his remarks. When Hunt proposed an additional three cheers in his favor, every man on the plat-form was on his feet in an instant and, hats in hand, they led the 2,000 guests in hearty and ringing applause, the sound of which startled even the phlegmatic donkey boys of Cairo across the narrow street. (CT 1893a)

Three additional dignitaries spoke briefl y. Gen. Nelson Miles said, “Our country reviewed the Seven Wonders of the World and declared that by the side of the Ferris Wheel all of them would be dwarfed into insignifi -cance. It is particularly fi tting that this great wheel should stand where all nations of the world may look up and see what the daring of an American engineer can aspire to” (CT 1893a).

Maj. Moses Handy, speaking on behalf of the World’s Fair Commit-tee, said, “Although the project of the Ferris Wheel sounded, when fi rst broached, like an impossibility, the Exposition authorities had confi dence in it because of the fact that Mr. Ferris was its projector” (CT 1893a). He added that the Ferris Wheel would be to the World’s Columbian Exposition what the Eiffel Tower was to the Paris Exposition and more, as it captured the imagination of the whole country.

The fi nal speaker, Judge William Vincent, spotlighted Ferris by saying, “To his persistency was due almost entirely the successful erection of this great feat of engineering. As the delicate outline of this great wheel has already impressed itself upon the landscape, so will the name of its inventor

be indelibly impressed upon the history of engineering in this country” (CT 1893a). At this point, it was time for the great Wheel to start making its endless circles in the sky.

Earlier, Margaret had presented her husband with a beautiful golden whistle. Ferris took it out and blew it as signal for the massive Wheel to begin revolving. At the sound of the whistle, a loud cheer rang out and the band began playing “America.” The Wheel began revolving as the crowd pressed forward toward the steps leading to the waiting passenger cars. Six cabins were loaded at a time. In each one was a conductor or guard wearing a snappy blue coat and white trousers. A passenger’s fi rst revo-lution was interrupted by fi ve stops as the wheel loaded the rest of the 36 cabins, but the second revolution went without stopping. The loading platforms allowed fresh passengers to enter the cars from one side while those who had just ridden exited from the other, maximizing the fl ow of customers. This allowed the processing of three rides an hour, each ride lasting 20 minutes.

Many notables took the fi rst ride. Among those in the lead car with the Ferrises was the newly re-elected mayor of Chicago, Carter Harrison, and his wife. Harrison, owner and editor of the Chicago Times and one of the main promoters to get Chicago designated as the site of the Columbian Exposition, was delighted to be in offi ce during the Exposition’s festivities. Favorable reports he heard about the Fair, especially from Europe, about how Chicago was exceeding all expectations and how the Ferris Wheel was considered the Eighth Wonder of the World, gave him great satisfaction. However, he would not live to see the Fair’s conclusion.

For Margaret and George Ferris, the evening and night of June 21 were exhilarating and magical. Their friends and relatives, his colleagues, and other well-wishers congratulated them wherever they went. Although in constant touch through letters and telegrams, the couple had been apart until just before the Wheel’s debut—she in Chicago and he in Pittsburgh. It was good to be together in the same place once again, sharing this trium-phant and glorious time. With congratulations pouring in from everywhere, they were in grand spirits at the top of the world, riding high on the suc-cess of the towering Wheel circling the skies of Chicago. From the moment the Wheel had started revolving, reporters followed the mysterious Ferris around, trying to get a story. Even though he was reserved and granted few interviews, Ferris became a media darling; the attention he received was similar to what the pioneering Wright Brothers and Charles Lindbergh would one day experience.

Even though Ferris seemed to be at the height of his profession—a leg-end in his own time, his name known around the world—some were still skeptical. For one thing, his Wheel had yet to be tested by the high winds prevalent in the area. When it was, skeptics suggested its fl imsy construc-tion would prove no match and Ferris’s Wheel would twist, turn, and rack, and maybe even topple or crumble. The one responsible for the injuries and deaths that would surely result would be Ferris, the fi rst in line for the law-suits that would follow.


INCREDIBLE WHEEL 93

The day after the triumphant debut of his great invention, Ferris was rudely jolted out of any state of euphoria. That is when lawyers for the Garden City Observation Wheel Company served him patent infringement papers. His deposition was set for July 10, at which time he could make a statement about the charges, and was to answer questions. It would be the fi rst of several depositions requiring his appearance.

More trouble. On Sunday, July 9, a savage thunderstorm approached Chicago. A number of funnel clouds were spotted around the city and near the fairgrounds, with gale-force winds in the 115-miles-per-hour range. Ac-cording to Carl Snyder of International Magazine, when Ferris heard of the coming storm, he rushed to his Wheel.

Mrs. Ferris and a reporter accompanied him as he entered one of its cars. Slowly the great wheel lifted them into the midst of the roaring, howling tempest. As the mad storm swept round the cars, the blast was deafening. It screamed through the thin spider-like girders and shook the win-dows with savage fury. It was a place to try better men’s nerves. The inventor had faith in his wheel, Mrs. Ferris in her husband. The reporter at that moment believed neither in God nor man. But the beautiful wheel hardly shivered. It turned as evenly and smoothly as if fanned by summer zephyrs. That headlong gale, plunging against it with an onset 110 miles per hour, could not cause a perceptible de-fl ection in its course. (Snyder 1893)

Several other passengers aboard the Wheel during the storm wrote a letter to Engineering News, recalling the event. It said, “It took the com-bined effort of two of us to close the doors tight. The wind blew so hard the rain drops appeared to be fl owing horizontal instead of vertical. There was a slight vibration; the wheel vibrated sideways, perhaps an inch and a half out of its normal position” (Anderson 1992).

Although several exhibits, displays, and structures at the Fair were dam-aged, Ferris’s Wheel came through the horrifi c storm unharmed, a true test that it was safe and structurally sound. One of the gold-standard U.S. scien-tifi c publications of the day, Scientifi c American, put its stamp of approval on the Wheel’s soundness. It proclaimed that by withstanding gale-force winds and storms, absorbing lightning, and running fl awlessly through the duration of the Exposition, the Ferris Wheel proved completely safe.

The day after the thunderstorm had put the Wheel to the test, a de-structive fi re broke out in the tower of the Cold Storage Building in the White City. That was enough to raise questions not just about the safety of the Fair’s buildings but about the Wheel itself. Although a fi re starting in one of its passenger cabins was quite unlikely, they had wood interiors and upholstered seats, and some passengers smoked and lit matches in spite of prohibitions. Ferris was put on notice: Take precautions to control any fi res that might occur in the cabins of the Wheel, or else. In the end, no fi res


were ever reported aboard the Ferris Wheel, nor any reports of any passen-ger injuries of any kind.

That same day, July 10, Ferris made his fi rst appearance to answer charges. The Garden City Observation Wheel Company claimed that his wheel violated the rights of a patent it now owned. The company had pur-chased the patent obtained by William Somers, the owner of a few 50-foot wooden amusement park wheels on the East Coast. Somers’s patent, issued in January 1893, just a few months before the Ferris Wheel opened to the public, applied to a small, 16-seat roundabout wheel.

As it came to light, Garden City had attempted to get a concession to build a wheel at the Fair but was turned down by the Exposition Commit-tee. Not dissuaded, Garden City erected a 60-foot-tall wheel—a copy of one of Somers’s East Coast wooden wheels—outside the fairgrounds and had moderate success with it. But the company gained none of the fame and fortune afforded Ferris. Not surprisingly, Garden City offi cials were resentful.

After delineating in great detail, point-by-point, how the Ferris Wheel differed from a wooden Somers wheel with compressive spokes, and how its details did not violate any of Somers’s patented items, Ferris left the hearings sure of himself. But it was not over yet, not by a long shot! Many more depositions on the horizon faced Ferris and his partners. Before the lawsuit was over, the inventive engineer would fi nd out how fi nancially and personally damaging legal proceedings can be.

* * *

After being opened by President Grover Cleveland on May 1, the Colum-bian Exposition prepared for the crowds. However, the country’s economy was sluggish, with many people out of work nationwide; attendance at the Fair started out slowly. Also, many of its exhibits were not ready at open-ing and there was a shortage of places to eat. Many Chicagoans placed the blame for the small crowds on the unfavorable coverage in the Eastern press. Nevertheless, crowds grew larger by mid-summer; some credited the Ferris Wheel for the dramatic increases in attendance.

The soaring Ferris Wheel was the fi rst sight travelers had of the Fair-grounds. Upon seeing it, reported the Chicago Sunday Tribune, “Visitors ask their fi rst question when they see if from afar, ‘What on earth is that?’ This is the astonished inquiry that every passenger on the Illinois Central, the ‘L’ and the steamboat lines on the lake makes as soon as he [or she] gets his [or her] fi rst sight of the Ferris Wheel. It is the landmark of the Fair” (TCST 1893).

As the signature attraction of the World’s Columbian Exposition, Ferris’s invention was wildly popular and was probably one of the main reasons for the Fair making a profi t (meager as it ended up being). In 19 short weeks of operation, the Wheel carried approximately 1.5 million passengers. On its busiest days, it carried well over 30,000 passengers, and would have carried more if people would not have had to pay to get into the Exposition fi rst

INCREDIBLE WHEEL 95

before taking a ride. (In essence, that arrangement doubled the price of riding the Wheel.) At a cost of 50 cents for a ride, which was as much as the admission to the Co-lumbian Exposition itself and ten times the cost of a carousel ride, the Ferris Wheel amazingly grossed more than $750,000 ($16 million in 2009 dollars).

In addition, it made more than 10,000 revolutions without me-chanical incident or injuries. Re-ported Rice,

The wheel ran upon the schedule time of 20 minutes for the double round trip from the time it started on June 21st until the close of the fair. There were no delays or halts or any kind. The en-gine always had up steam and there was always a clear track and no break-downs. This record of almost fi ve months of con-stant running for such an intricate mass of mecha-nism without a hitch is simply marvelous. It is an added triumph to American engineering ability and skill. The paid admissions to the wheel on week-days were about nine percent and on Sunday about 12 percent of the paid admission to the exposition. (Rice 1901)

According to Anderson,

None of the accounts of the Ferris Wheel’s fi nancial suc-cess mention the thousands of dollars that Ferris must have made by tightly controlling the sale of souvenirs bearing an image of the Ferris Wheel and himself. In addition to the various offi cial souvenir booklets describing the man and his Wheel, there were attractively framed pictures, paperweights, medals, spoons, and dozens of other items, most signed by Ferris and certifi ed as being authorized products. Ferris, without knowing it, may have been the inspiration of later entrepreneurs like Walt Disney, who made millions selling rights to Mickey Mouse and other

The Ferris Wheel in operation in the summer of 1893. Fairgoersin those days dressed more for-mally than they do today.



cartoon characters he created. Many of these Ferris Wheel items became family heirlooms and, today, are prized col-lectibles. (Anderson 1992)

Those who rode the Wheel were a cross section of society, from Indian chiefs and heads of state to commoners. “The patrons were from all sta-tions of life. The rich and poor, high and low, senators, governors, farmers, merchants, mechanics and laboring men [and women] all seemed equally anxious to take a ride upon this novel wheel” (Rice 1901).

Many rode the Wheel several times. Ferris’s 19-year-old niece, Eva Dangberg, for one, rode the wheel 64 times and received a certifi cate, of-fi cially signed by Ferris, confi rming that fact. It is a treasured artifact in the Dangberg family archives.

William Sullivan, an inventor from Roodhouse, Illinois, was fascinated by the Wheel and rode it several times. His reasons for doing so, however, were practical, not for pleasure. After examining the wheel in great detail and making copious sketches, he returned home where he set out to create, perfect, and market a portable version of the Ferris Wheel. Ferris never patented his wheel or any elements of it. Several builders, manufacturers, and inventors like Sullivan came to the Chicago Exposition solely to take measurements and copy details of Ferris’s invention. Among them were a number of Europeans looking for ideas for upcoming World’s Fairs and amusement parks overseas.

Charles Jacobs, an English engineer, wrote Ferris that he had clients in England who wanted Jacobs to build a copy of the Ferris Wheel there. He said, “I have declined to do so without your co-operation, and ask you if you would be willing to provide all the plans and act as advising engineer for the erection of a duplicate wheel in England” (Letter from Jacobs to Ferris, Dec. 9, 1893, London, England). He also wanted to know what Ferris’s fee might be for such an arrangement. Ferris and Jacobs never did anything together, nor did Ferris receive any monies from anyone inspired by his invention, or from anyone who might have copied any or all of the Wheel’s details or design concepts.

Anyone who rode the Ferris Wheel had high praise for it and was pleased with the experience. However, one passenger disembarked and de-manded his money back. “He claimed that he had not felt the whirling sen-sation he had expected after having ridden small pleasure wheels like the Somers wheels on the east coast. Ferris accepted the complaint as a compli-ment. He wanted people to feel safe and often pointed out that his was an observation not an amusement wheel” (Anderson 1992).

Ferris likened the mechanical movement of his invention as being like that of a fi ne watch. To move smoothly and effortlessly, the Wheel had to remain a true circle during operation. He said, “It had to be a perfect pinion wheel and its revolving mechanism as precise as the little wheel that goes fl icking back and forth in an Elgin watch” (Snyder 1893).

The most unusual passenger situation, one with potential for tragedy, occurred in the Wheel’s thirteenth week of operation. The strong bars on

INCREDIBLE WHEEL 97

the window and door of the cabins and the quick thinking a woman pas-senger prevented a catastrophe. A Kentuckian, afraid of heights, along with his wife entered a cabin. When it reached its upper turn, the man became crazed with excitement, scaring the other passengers. He paced excitedly back and forth, then jumped against the sides and doors of the car, bending its safety bars and breaking glass. With a couple of other men, the cabin attendant tried to subdue him with little success because he was too strong. Finally, a cool-headed woman, throwing modesty and propriety to the wind, took off her fl owing skirt, threw it over the madman’s head, and held it there. It quieted the agitated man and he became as calm as an ostrich with his head in the sand. When their car returned to earth, she retrieved her skirt and was thanked by all. The troubled man and his wife exited quickly and silently. Although no one was hurt, the experience left a few nerves on edge.

In another part of the Fair, the appearance of Karl Benz’s latest four-wheel automobile sporting a newly invented fi xed-front axle with mov-able stub axles for steering, amazed every American mechanic who had been working on “horseless carriages,” including Henry Ford. The types of refi nements evident in the Benz car revealed that Europe, especially Ger-many, France, and Italy, was fully a decade ahead of the United States in automotive production. Europe, however, did not have a Ferris Wheel or anything approaching it. The German engineers with Benz certainly took note of that.

When Emily Roebling and her son John, both loyal supporters of RPI, as was her husband (and John’s father) Washington, attended the Chicago Fair, they were impressed to see the contributions of so many RPI graduates. In particular, John noted of the complexity of the Ferris Wheel on which his former classmate Gronau had done the structural calculations. RPI en-gineers were as responsible for the success of the wheel as they were for the Brooklyn Bridge, which had debuted almost exactly ten years earlier.

Among the many RPI-related notables who observed Ferris’s Wheel at the Fair was William Searles, an 1860 graduate of RPI, author of two gold-standard engineering textbooks and an active member of ASCE. As one of America’s more prominent civil engineers, the 56-year-old Searles might be considered representative of the U.S. civil engineering community overall regarding the observations and comments he made about the Ferris Wheel. When he presented a scholarly report on its design and construction at a special meeting of the Civil Engineers’ Club of Cleveland, he stressed how impressed he was by the Wheel’s amazing technology, plus the engineering skill evident in its design. Searles closed his Cleveland presentation by stat-ing, “It is a remarkable fact, which should not be overlooked, that the pro-jector of the wheel, Mr. Ferris, is a young man only 12 years out of school and that Mr. Gronau, the perfector of the details, is only fi ve years out of school. It is encouraging to the young men, and good promise for America in the 20th century” (Searles 1893).

Several marriage proposals were made while young couples rode the Wheel, and even a few marriage ceremonies were requested but were not


executed. Wrote Rice, “Letters were received from several couples who wished to be married in the highest car. This didn’t happen. They had to be content with a wedding ceremony performed in the offi ce of the superintendent” (Rice 1901).

A number of novels, poems, and songs were written about the Wheel. No less than a dozen tunes were copyrighted in 1893 alone, the most popular being the song “The Ferris Wheel Waltz” by G. Valisi and H. Clyde.

* * *

After Ferris’s parents attended the Exposition, rode their son’s inven-tion several times, and basked in the glory of his amazing engineer-ing feat, they traveled to Galesburg to visit relatives and old friends. On September 5 they attended a big Ferris family picnic at Lake George, east of town. None of George Sr.’s siblings was alive, but

more than 60 members of the clan attended. As the oldest surviving Ferris town founder, George Sr. was sought after for stories about the old days, which he gladly told. The cost of things when Galesburg was founded in 1837, for in-stance, interested many. He told them, “A 100 pound hog brought $1.50. Eggs were worth three cents a dozen. Beef

brought one cent a pound. As for sugar we made maple sugar. We had no white sugar” (GEM 1893).

Also of interest to the picnickers were details about George Sr.’s orange groves and life in California, and information about his son and his famous Wheel. As the fi rst Ferris to graduate as a civil engineer from the prestigious RPI, George Jr. was frequently discussed among family members, mostly in Illinois but also in New York and Connecticut. With the recent success of his great Wheel, along with the big bridges he had built, the 34-year-old Ferris had become a local folk hero of sorts; his exploits added to the other Ferris lore.

As hints of the big money Ferris was making with his invention trickled down to his father, George Sr. wrote him, “It occurs to me that if you are making the amount of money being reported, you better lay some up for

The intricate spider-web con-struction of the Ferris Wheel.


INCREDIBLE WHEEL 99

a rainy day. You may want to consider sending Fred [Dangberg] $10,000, who could use it to good advantage just now” (Letter from Ferris Sr. to H. Fred Dangberg, Nov. 19, 1893, Riverside, Calif., recounting the contents of a letter Ferris Sr. had recently written to his son George Jr.). Not bad ad-vice, if Ferris took it, in light of the paralyzing effect the depression caused by the panic of 1893 was having on the nation’s economy, especially on the railroad business and related industries. The depression was signifi cantly curtailing railroad development and construction, and was bankrupting many of the businesses for which Ferris’s two engineering companies pro-vided services.

In the same letter to Dangberg mentioning money being made by George Jr. on his Wheel invention, George Sr. also conveyed that he had written George Jr. to express support for his upcoming schemes: proposals for a giant bridge over the Ohio River at Cincinnati and for canal locks using his patented compressed air designs, and for holding on to and con-tinuing to operate the Ferris Wheel. He told Dangberg he wrote to his son, “You have all our support and can use all our names to support your proj-ects in any way you want” (Letter from Ferris Sr. to H. Fred Dangberg, Nov. 19, 1893, Riverside, Calif., recounting the contents of a letter Ferris Sr. had recently written to his son George Jr.).

* * *

On October 26, 1893, the Chicago Tribune published an article that cast considerable doubt on Garden City’s lawsuit allegations against Ferris that, in essence, he stole the idea and details for his Wheel from Somers. In the Tribune article, one George E. Baird of Minneapolis, Minnesota, declared that vertical passenger-carrying wheels were his creation and he had indisputable evidence to prove it. His Ferris-Wheel-type design had been well documented in a November 2, 1889, story printed by the Chicago Tribune. According to Baird, he was the originator of large, cir-culating observation/amusement wheels—not Ferris, Somers, Fowler, or Wachter (CT 1893b). If any of those four were regular readers of the Chicago Tribune in 1889, or had seen its November 2 article of that year, Baird’s contention had some merit.

Baird had proposed building “an immense wheel whose diameter would be from 500 to 700 feet and on the rim of this wheel there would be constructed a series of carriages to carry people around its course, each car-riage holding several hundred people” (Baird 1889). Baird had estimated his Columbian Exposition-proposed wheel, the Great Jupiter, would cost “from $4 to $6 million” to build (nearly 18 times what the Ferris Wheel cost!). He believed 40 million people would attend the Chicago Fair and “everyone of them would be willing to pay 25 or 50 cents to ride on Great Jupiter” (Baird 1889).

The monster wheel envisioned by Baird, however, could not be built (at least, not in 1893). If it had, just like Morison’s proposed taller-than-the-Eiffel-Tower structure, it would have been a colossal fi nancial disaster


because considerably fewer than 40 million people attended the Exposition. Only 1.5 million—not 40 million—people rode the Ferris Wheel.

Baird’s pipe dream was quickly squashed. He said, “I tried to get capi-talists to assist me in erecting the great wheel but they all, and the engineers to whom I presented my plans, told me that such a thing was an impos-sibility.” He also reported that “the Chicago committee organized at the time [1889] for securing the Fair,” never got back to him, so he “fi nally had to drop the matter.” After the Ferris Wheel’s success, Baird again sur-faced saying, “I think Mr. Ferris should receive all honor due him for the construction of this wonderful piece of mechanism as its engineer, but not as its originator” (CT 1893b). That honor, Baird believed, belonged to him alone.

In the end, Baird never built an observation wheel of any size, any-where. This is another case of an idea proposed but not fully thought out or executed, and an illustration of the old maxim, “Success has many fa-thers, but failure is an orphan.” The Chicago Tribune article about Baird, however, greatly compromised Garden City’s case and dispelled claims that Somers was the inventor of large tension wheels. Also, it further added to the mystery of where Ferris got his idea for the Chicago Fair. Was it from the water wheels of his youth, the industrial wheels of his RPI days, his 1890 ride on Somers’s amusement wheel at Atlantic City, or from articles like those by the Tribune on Baird? Or did it come, as Ferris suggested, from a moment of inspiration (possibly fueled by one or all of these)? No one will ever really know.

When the World’s Columbian Exposition formally closed on October 30, Fair offi cials had planned a day of celebrations. Instead, it was a sad, somber event. Two days before the closing, Chicago Mayor Harrison, a strong backer of the Exposition, was assassinated. His assailant was an un-stable former supporter, unhappy that he did not receive a high appoint-ment when Harrison was re-elected. All over Chicago, as well as on the fairgrounds, fl ags fl ew at half-mast and an impressive memorial service was held in the White City’s Festival Hall.

Even though the Exposition was offi cially over, the Fairgrounds re-mained open to visitors willing to fork out 50 cents to see the exhibits being removed and buildings being demolished. The Ferris Wheel did not stop making circles in the sky and taking on riders. The Ferris Wheel Company took the position that it had a lease until January and could operate the Wheel until then. However, Burnham and certain Exposition representa-tives had a different understanding of their agreement. Early on the morn-ing of November 1, a detachment of Exposition guards arrived at the Wheel and told Rice to close down operations. He refused. The guards then forc-ibly began stopping people from entering the site. Ferris Wheel employees responded by ordering the guards off the company’s property. When they refused, pushing matches and fi stfi ghts broke out, and a near-riot ensued.

Word of the trouble was sent to the nearest police station. A squad of offi cers in uniform and civilian dress rushed to the scene. At that point, an Exposition guard attempted to physically remove a city detective from the

INCREDIBLE WHEEL 101

Wheel’s platform. The offi cer broke loose, drew his revolver, and immedi-ately arrested the man. Fairgoers present sided with the Wheel personnel and whenever an Exposition guard was taken off to the police station, they cheered. During the night and well into the next day, several Exposition guards as well as a few Wheel employees remained in police custody.

Working in the dark of night, the Exposition committee hurriedly erected a sturdy fence to prevent people from entering the Plaisance and riding the Ferris Wheel. It was an effective move. Even though the Wheel continued to turn, only a few people could get in and ride it, mainly fair workers and others able to climb over the newly erected fence. When Ferris arrived on November 2, he was incensed. An article in the New York Timesnoted his comments, “I don’t know what animus is behind this shameful outrage on our rights and the rights of visitors, but it is a shame and out-rage for the Exposition to close the Fair this way” (NYT 1893).

On November 3, the Ferris Wheel Company began preparing legal pro-ceedings against the Exposition for damages, and Ferris left for the East Coast to meet with interested parties and scout other locations for his Wheel.


CHAPTER NINE

Lawsuits and Ruin

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

—Oscar Wilde

The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition lasted six months and attracted some 27.5 million visitors at a time when the nation was in the throes

of one of its worst depressions. The country’s population at the time was 65 million. Even though attendance at the Exposition overall was considerably less than hoped, there was one spectacular day—Chicago Day on Octo-ber 9—when the Fair drew a whopping 750,000 attendees, easily breaking the previous record of 397,000 held by the Paris Exposition. “It was more people than had attended any single day of any peaceable event in history,” claimed Erik Larson in The Devil in the White City (Larson 2003).

Occupying more than a square mile of beautifully manicured grounds and having more than 200 superbly designed buildings, the Exposition was “[…] magical beyond doubt […] something enchanting, known throughout the world as the White City. One structure, rejected at fi rst as a ‘monstros-ity,’ became the fair’s emblem, a machine so huge and astounding that it instantly eclipsed the tower of Alexandre Eiffel that had had so wounded America’s pride” (Larson 2003).

The builder of that “one structure,” the Ferris Wheel, cleared approxi-mately $150,000 ($3.5 million in 2009 dollars) in profi ts during the Ex-position. However, George Ferris did not come away the biggest fi nancial winner among private ventures at the Fair. That distinction went to Buffalo Bill Cody, who made $1 million ($23 million in 2009 dollars) with his Wild West Show. With some of his earnings, Cody founded Cody, Wyoming. He also built a cemetery and a grand fairground for North Platte, Nebraska, where his ranch and large home were located.

Cody and Ferris had many things in common. Both were Westerners, tall, good-looking, and noticed by women; both sported impressive mus-taches and enjoyed wearing attention-getting fashions; both were daring

LAWSUITS AND RUIN 103

and determined, legends in their own time, and recog-nized globally; and both were creative, innovative, and willing to explore new ideas and follow untried roads. They were also susceptible to taking risks that exposed them to massive reversals of fortune. As it turned out, Ferris’s descent from fame and fortune would come sooner than Cody’s.

In addition to being a major key to the Fair’s suc-cess, Ferris’s invention, from the moment it made its fi rst revolution, also had a ongoing infl uence on Amer-ican life, especially the operation of fairs and amuse-ment parks. According to Larson, “Every carnival since 1893 has included a Ferris wheel” (Larson 2003). But Ferris’s intriguing Wheel was not the only item of sig-nifi cance introduced at the Chicago Fair. Also ingenious were countless eye-opening electrical devices on display. They planted mind seeds about the limitless potential of electric power and light. Other intro-ductions included the Pledge of Allegiance, the Columbus Day federal holi-day, the hamburger sandwich, Cracker Jacks popcorn candy, Aunt Jemima syrup, Cream of Wheat cereal, Shredded Wheat cereal, Pabst beer, Juicy Fruit gum, and picture postcards.

Not able to get a timely injunction against the Exposition for its Gestapo-like tactics in shutting down the Wheel’s operation or for its erection of a barricading fence around it, the Ferris Wheel Company faced a crisis. The record-setting crowds of late October, which averaged 20,000 riders a day, dropped drastically to just a few hundred daily diehards. Added to that, the

Buffalo Bill Cody (fourth from right, back row) with American Indian chiefs. Several rode the Ferris Wheel in full Indian regalia, to the delight of fairgoers. Although not allowed on the Fairgrounds proper by the Fair Committee, Cody’s world-famous Wild West Show was a hit of the 1893 Columbian Exposition, and he made more than $1 mil-lion with it—more money than any other presenter of special events or exhibits.

Source: Courtesy of John C.H. Grabill/RMP Archive.


Ferris Company’s threatened lawsuit to recover damages for the Exposi-tion offi cials’ actions was promptly answered by the Exposition Company. On November 9 the latter brought a claim against Ferris for $75,000 plus costs, allegedly for monies still due it for its share of passenger receipts.

In addition to being the star of the Chicago Fair and one of its main draws, the Ferris Wheel proved a good moneymaker for the Exposition, whose overall profi ts ended up being razor-thin. The visitors who only wanted to ride the Ferris Wheel had to fi rst pay 50 cents to get onto the Fairgrounds, then another 50 cents to ride the wheel. Fifty percent of the Wheel charge went to the Exposition organization. So, from every dollar these visitors paid, the Exposition took 75 cents and Ferris only 25 cents!

The gross receipts of the Ferris Wheel were approximately $750,000, of which $300,000 was taken out to offset construction costs, leaving $450,000 to be split between the two parties. The Exposition’s $225,000 was clear profi t, while from Ferris’s same amount $62,000 was deducted to fi nish covering the actual cost of construction ($362,000). This left him with $163,000, out of which he had to pay operating expenses. He also had to pay for demolition and moving expenses. But salvage revenues, if he elected to destroy his invention after the Fair, would cover those. Not included in these numbers were any monies Ferris garnered from the sale of Wheel souvenirs and novelties.

The complicated Ferris and Exposition lawsuits and countersuits were not quickly resolved; before it all ended, they became bitter—a sad conclu-sion to a situation that had held so much promise.

* * *

Ferris had, indeed, met the challenge to outdo Eiffel. The Alleghenian cap-tured the essence of Ferris’s invention by saying, “Considered from the engineering standpoint as well as from that of popular interest, the Ferris Wheel is a greater marvel than the Eiffel Tower. The tower involved no new engineering principle, and when fi nished was a thing dead. The wheel, on the other hand, has movement and grace, and the indescribable charm pos-sessed by a vast body in action” (Graves 1893).

Any hopes Ferris might have had, however, that his engineering marvel would be left standing and enshrined as the Eiffel Tower was, and that he would receive the accolades and fi nancial rewards Eiffel received, seemed remote considering his messy lawsuits with the Exposition’s powers-that-be. If Burnham and his Exposition Committee had anything to do with it, the Ferris Wheel, the queen of the World’s Exposition of 1893, would never become to Chicago and Americans what the Eiffel Tower, the star of the World’s Exposition of 1889, became to Paris and the French. After all the hoopla about surpassing the tower in Paris, the Chicago Exposition Committee never put similar efforts into keeping for posterity the master-piece that so superbly fulfi lled its request. It remained for the Europeans to do this, once they started building imitations of the Ferris Wheel. One copy, the Prater Park wheel in Vienna, which debuted in 1897, still operates


today like a well-designed clock. Although located on foreign soil, it serves as a monument to and a symbol of nineteenth-century American engineering skill and in-genuity. “The Giant Ferris wheel is as much a part of Vienna as the Vienna Boys’ Choir, the Opera, St. Stephen’s Cathedral or the Spanish Riding School” (Jahn 1989).

Ferris’s next challenge was to fi nd a favorable place to move his Wheel and start generating revenue again. In early November 1893, he went to New York to look over potential sites and meet with in-terested parties, but the whole process left him lukewarm. Most parties were interested in purchas-ing his Wheel, but he wasn’t actu-ally interested in selling. Rather, his hopes were to retain majority ownership and have his own com-pany operate his invention. The only offer he even seriously con-sidered was one to move the Wheel to Broadway and 37th Street in New York City, where it would be part of an at-traction called “Old Vienna.” However, he did not accept the fi nal terms of that deal, which basically reduced much of his control over operations.

Ferris conveyed these fi ndings and his feelings to Hunt, Onderdock, Vincent, and other offi cers of his Wheel Com-pany. They elected to keep the Wheel, which had ceased op-erating, where it was (at the Exposition fairgrounds) for the time being. They left it to Ferris’s judgment to fi nd the right location and venue when he could. They also discussed the possible progress and ramifi cations of the company’s law-suits with the Exposition people and with the Garden City Observation Wheel group. All offi cers had already had their depositions taken for the Garden City suit and the case seemed to be moving along quickly, although at a costly pace.

In additional meetings, offi cers of Ferris Wheel Company also thrashed about the effects the ongoing depression were having on each of their businesses, and how a continuing slow economy might affect future op-erations of the Ferris Wheel. The nation’s mounting economic woes, which had begun on June 27 with the crash of the U.S. stock market (the Panic of 1893), had been gathering steam for fi ve months. By the end of 1893,

A 200-foot-diameter Ferris wheel in Prater Park, Vienna, Austria. Built in 1897, it is the world’s oldest continuously operated observation/pleasure wheel and a tribute, on foreign soil, to the ingenuity and ex-pertise of nineteenth-century American engineers.

Source: Courtesy of Larry Feeser.


600 banks had closed, 74 railroads had gone out business, and more than 15,000 commercial businesses had collapsed. Industrial production sagged and money became increasingly tight. Massive layoffs and frequent labor strikes were the order of the day. Indeed, keeping the Wheel temporarily in “storage” seemed like a wise strategy.

So, through the cold, harsh winter of 1893–1894, the tall steel giant stood alone, silent and idle, neglected and exposed on the Midway Plai-sance. When coated with ice and snow, it appeared ghostly, like a colossal round spiderweb trying to climb to the heavens. In the spring of 1894, at a cost of $14,833, hundreds of workers dismantled the Wheel. It was shipped by wagon train to a nearby rail yard and stored on fl at cars. Through-out 1894, Ferris considered numerous possible options and sites, including Coney Island, Atlantic City, and London, and he discarded them all.

At the beginning of 1894, the fi rst of many Ferris Wheel imitators appeared. It was a 100-foot-diameter wheel at the California Midwinter International Exposition in San Francisco. Though much smaller, the San Francisco wheel was almost structurally identical with the original Wheel wasting away in Chicago. Its builder, engineer J. K. Firth, had been to the Chicago Fair several times to study details and make sketches of Ferris’s invention. As with others who copied his Wheel, whether small or large in scale, Ferris received no compensation from Firth or the California Mid-winter Exposition people. Reproducing his design and construction details, it seems, had become fair game. Ferris never brought legal action against any imitators, his only satisfaction being that “imitation is the highest form of fl attery.”

May 1894 saw the beginning of one of the most violent labor confl icts in U.S. history, the Pullman Strike. The Pullman Palace Car Company, on whose classy railroad dining-sleeper cars rode many of the Fair’s attend-ees (and Ferris himself), was one of Illinois’s largest employers. Most of its employees lived in company-owned houses in the company’s town, Pull-man, Illinois, just south of downtown Chicago. Because of falling values, decreasing demand for Pullman cars, and dwindling profi ts during the de-pression, company head George Pullman, a big supporter of the Columbian Exposition, cut employee wages by 28% but kept the rents of his company houses the same.

Squeezed from both ends, his workers were pushed to the breaking point. On May 11, 4,000 of them staged a wildcat strike. Encouraged andsupported by the American Railway Union, the strike effectively shut down production in the Pullman factories and led to a lockout, with railroad workers across the nation refusing to switch Pullman cars. The Illinois strike instigated other workers around the country to walk off their jobs. Strikers blocked trains, burned railcars and other property, and prevented the transportation of goods and the U.S. mail. All traffi c west of Chicago came to a halt, while travel in and out of Chicago was down 75%.

Declaring the Pullman Strike a national emergency and a threat to pub-lic safety, President Cleveland sent U.S. marshals and 12,000 U.S. Army troops to Chicago to break up the blockage and get deliveries and the U.S.


mail moving again. He placed the troops under the command of Gen. Nel-son Miles, previously the grand marshal of the Columbian Exposition and a great admirer of Ferris and the Ferris Wheel.

By the time the strike was fi nally broken, 13 strikers were dead and 57 wounded, and an estimated $340,000 ($7 million in 2009 dollars) worth of property damage was done. After that, Pullman remained exceedingly un-popular with rail workers and labor. When he died in 1897, he was buried at night in a lead-lined coffi n within a reinforced-concrete vault, covered with several tons of concrete to prevent his body from being exhumed and desecrated by labor activists.

Some good news reached Ferris one day before Independence Day in 1894. On July 3, Judge Peter Grosscup ruled in Ferris’s favor and dis-missed the patent infringement lawsuit brought by the Garden City Ob-servation Wheel Company. During the case’s involved legal proceedings, it was emphatically pointed out by engineering experts that, construction-wise, the Somers and Ferris wheels had little in common. Somers’s was a small, wooden, compressive-spoke apparatus, a common amusement-ride device that had been in operation around the world for more than a cen-tury. Ferris’s was a gigantic, steel tension wheel never before seen. Besides, as was reported in the Chicago Tribune articles, George Baird had come up with the idea for huge passenger wheels long before Somers built any of his on the East Coast. Once these facts were ascertained, Garden City lawyers concentrated on trying to establish patent infringement based on the method Ferris used to rotate his wheel.

Somers’s patent called for using friction cables or ropes running around and in grooves in his wheel’s outer rim. Experts proved that was not the drive system used by Ferris. Rather, the Ferris Wheel had continuous gears around the rims of the two parallel, circular sections comprising the Wheel. The Wheel confi guration was turned by means of a pair of endless chains that engaged the teeth of these gears at the Wheel’s base. Ferris testifi ed that he had originally considered seeking a patent for this drive mechanism and system, but dropped the idea when advised that the method, just as the cable method of Somers’s wheels, had been in wide use for years.

Although the Garden City suit had not stopped the operation of the Ferris Wheel during the Fair, the time and money required for a proper legal defense was staggering. Because Ferris was the majority stockholder in his company, the funds needed for its defense came mainly out of his pocket. In his fi nal ruling, Judge Grosscup ordered Garden City to pay Fer-ris only $26.50 in costs! Clearly, the only winners in the case were the law-yers representing the two parties.

* * *

By mid-1894, Ferris, whose health had been precarious since his early bridge-building days in Kentucky, was suffering from consumption, the deteriora-tion of the body by pulmonary tuberculosis. It was not a new condition. Said Margaret, “My husband had been ill a long time with consumption”

(TH 1898). Rest was recommended but Ferris continued his hectic, non-stop pace, concerned about fi nding a home for his Wheel and worrying about the deteriorating commissions of his two engineering companies. Tabled projects included the 1,800-foot-long bridge over the Ohio River in Cincinnati, and all of his schemes for applying his compressed-air patents to construct canal locks.

Ferris’s increasing negative cash fl ow troubles became a major concern to both him and his associates. Most of all, it was upsetting his and Marga-ret’s warm relationship. As he dug deeper and deeper into his resources and savings, their quarrels became more frequent. Even though he was spend-ing most of his time in Chicago with Margaret, his frequent trips back and forth to Pittsburgh to take care of business, and their frequent separations, were taking a toll on their childless marriage.

In early 1895, after rejecting several offers (mostly to purchase his Wheel at a reduced price), Ferris decided to develop a small amusement park near Lincoln Park on Chicago’s North Side, at 2643 North Clark Street, and reassemble and operate the Ferris Wheel there. He reorganized his Wheel company and infused it with more capital from the sale of addi-tional stock. He also added a well-heeled partner, Charles Yerkes, the Chi-cago streetcar tycoon and monopolist. Yerkes lived extravagantly and was almost as unpopular with the working men and women of Chicago as was George Pullman.

Yerkes made his fortune as a fi nancier and as the builder and operator of transit lines, at one time controlling more than half of Chicago’s “L” companies. He contributed large sums of money to ensure that the 1893 Columbian Exposition was held in Chicago, and served on its Commit-tee on Fine Arts. He owned one of the largest art collections in the nation, including several works by the Belgian master Jan van Beers, and he lent ten van Beers paintings to the Exposition during its operation. In the late 1880s, he headed the syndicate that planned and built signifi cant parts of the London Underground. Yerkes’s wheelings and dealings inspired Theo-dore Dreiser’s novels The Financier, The Titan, and The Stoic.

The Clark Street location selected for Ferris’s new amusement park, an-chored by the “star of the Columbian Exposition” Wheel, seemed perfect. It was only two blocks from Lincoln Park and adjacent to one of Yerkes’s most heavily traveled trolley lines. In addition to the Ferris Wheel, the park’s plan included a spectacular roof garden with a restaurant at the level of the Wheel’s hub, 140 feet in the air, as well as bandstands, a vaudeville theatre, and areas for small exhibits.

However, when on February 25, 1895, the Ferris Wheel Company took out a building permit to build a small powerhouse structure for its Wheel, nearby residential property owners tried to stop construction. They complained that the Wheel and its park was “undesirable industrialism in-vading a residential district” (Duis and Holt 1981). When local property owners could not stop construction, they created a “local-option district” that incorporated Ferris Wheel Park. It required the consent of local voters for any license petitions and immediately denied Ferris and his associates a



liquor license for the park’s proposed restaurant. The property owners also got a law passed requiring a $50-a-day license on any form of amusement located within 1,500 feet of a public park, in this case, Jackson Park.

While in the midst of these distractions, in April 1895, the highly stressed and ailing Ferris received terrible news from California. His be-loved father, George Sr., had died on April 20 at his home in Riverside at age 77. Often considered his father’s favorite son, Ferris could always count on his father for support, counsel, and compassionate understanding. Now that George Sr. was gone, the builder of the great Wheel had lost not just a loving father but also a mentor, role model, and wise friend.

Ferris’s giant Wheel fascinated the British and Europeans from the mo-ment it became the sensation of the Chicago Fair. From both sides of the Atlantic, a number of efforts were made to get together with Ferris to build his engineering wonder someplace in England, but with no success. Never-theless, a few people in England decided to go ahead with or without him. A number of them made meticulous sketches, took measurements, and ac-quired detailed photographs of his Wheel.

James Graydon, an American who held a number of U.S. patents, in-cluding one for a submarine torpedo, actually secured a British patent on September 26, 1893, for “Revolving Wheels or Vertical Roundabouts for Amusement, Observation and Other Purposes.” The sketches of the wheel structure in his patent document package looked very much like the Ferris Wheel in Chicago. In 1894, while living in London, Graydon began look-ing for someone interested in buying the rights to his wheel patent. One of the people he met in his search was Walter Basset (1863–1907), a cel-ebrated cavalry and naval offi cer who had served in the Royal Navy under the command of the Prince of Wales. After leaving the service, Basset en-gaged in various engineering activities, ending up as one of the managing directors of a local engineering fi rm, Maudslay, Sons and Field (MS&F), where Graydon encountered him.

Graydon suggested to Basset that, for England’s upcoming Empire of India Exhibition to be held at Earls Court, a suburb of London, he build a Ferris wheel. And it just so happened he held a patent for such a wheel, and he would sell the rights to it for an appropriate fee if Basset was interested. He was! The two soon came to an agreement, which gave Bassett exclu-sive rights to Graydon’s patent for building Ferris wheels anywhere in the United Kingdom.

Upon obtaining the India Exhibition’s approval to build this circular-moving wheel, Basset looked for an engineer to prepare calculations and construction drawings. H. Cecil Booth, a brash, young English engineer a few years out of college who was working at MS&F at the time, said Bas-sett came into the offi ce and called out, “Is there anyone here who can de-sign a Great Wheel?” Even though he had never done so, Booth put up his hand and replied, “Yes, I can sir.” Basset’s answer was, “Very well, get with it at once. It is a very urgent matter” (Anderson 1992).

To top the Americans and the original Ferris Wheel, the Earls Court wheel was made 20 feet larger, 270 feet in diameter. Its carrying capacity,


however, was less, with 40 cars each holding 40 passengers. Describing how he designed the wheel (something he had no clue how to do), Booth said he referred to “an excellent photograph of the Ferris Wheel” that one of his college professors gave him, and to other sketches of Ferris’s Wheel that found their way across the Atlantic. Stated Booth, “Having no time to give original thought to the matter, I decided to adopt the proportions of the Ferris Wheel, taking the same ratios of depth of periphery to wheel diameter, etc.” (Anderson 1992).

The Earls Court Ferris wheel, looking much like the Chicago Ferris Wheel it copied, opened on May 25, 1895. It became an instant success and was kept in operation for 13 years, until the spring of 1908. Basset built a second Ferris wheel that debuted in August 1896, at the English resort town of Blackpool. Identical to Earls Court wheel, only smaller (200 feet in diameter), the Blackpool wheel stayed in business for 33 years, until 1929.

Basset’s third Ferris wheel was constructed in Vienna, Austria, in 1897, as part of the fi ftieth anniversary celebration of the coronation of Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria-Hungary. The 200-foot wheel (the Riesenrad, “great wheel”), located in Vienna’s famous Prater Park, still delights crowds of tourists after surviving World War I and a fi rebombing by the Russians in 1945, during World War II. Today, no fewer than one million people a year ride the wheel. It was even featured in the 1949 movie The Third Man, star-ring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton, and in the 1987 James Bond thriller The Living Daylights, starring Timothy Dalton.

The fourth Ferris wheel Basset built was his biggest, the 300-foot-di-ameter wheel built for the Paris Exposition of 1900. With an attendance of more than 50 million people, it easily shattered the Chicago Exposition numbers. Located only a short distance from the Eiffel Tower, the Paris Fer-ris wheel, like the Vienna wheel, was also known as the “great wheel” (LaGrande Roue). Extremely popular during the 1900 Exposition, the Paris Ferris wheel was also a hit during World War I as thousands of American soldiers rode it day and night. They sent countless postcards of the wheel back home, raving about this French engineering wonder. It operated for 20 years, until 1920.

Regarding the life span of Ferris wheels, the case might be made that Europeans were (and are) considerably less eager to tear down engineer-ing marvels than were Americans in the nineteenth century (or, more spe-cifi cally, than were the Chicagoans in charge of the World’s Exposition of 1893). While Ferris’s great Wheel was forced to stop operating and be dis-mantled or moved only six months after it debuted, Basset’s wheels never had to be moved. They operated where they were erected long after they were opened. Investors in Basset’s enterprises were able to reap consider-able profi ts and his wheels became European engineering icons.

Meanwhile, back in Chicago, the Ferris Wheel Park backers spent ap-proximately $150,000 reassembling the original Wheel and developing Fer-ris Wheel Park, but construction was slow. It was mid-September, 1895 before the Wheel’s mainframe was completed and its passenger cabins in-


stalled. A few small amusements had moved onto the grounds, but the sea-son was nearly over and the towering Wheel had to sit idle for another winter. By the spring of 1896, the central attraction of the little amuse-ment park was operating, but the lack of a liquor license stalled plans for a roof garden and restaurant. Ferris and his associates steadfastly hoped they would be able to obtain a license and create a fi ne establishment.

However, on June 23, 1896, the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the le-gality of the liquor license ban issued at Ferris Wheel Park, ending any hope for a signature restaurant. Now there was no other reason to go to Ferris Wheel Park except to ride the Wheel, because its handful of small exhibits and amusements were not much of a draw. With the nation still wallowing in the worst depression it had yet encountered, few Chicagoans were willing to even pay a half a dollar just to ride the Wheel. Inescapably, the operation at Clark Street began losing signifi cant money, beginning on Day 1. Until the economy turned around, it would likely continue to be a costly liability, so Ferris sold off most of his ownership in his celebrated invention.

By then, George and his wife had separated. Margaret had left Chi-cago and returned to Canton, Ohio, for an extended visit with her wid-owed mother, Mrs. J. H. Beatty. When the dejected and ailing Ferris left the Windy City, he moved back to Pittsburgh, taking up residence in the Duquesne Hotel. The fi ve remaining women closest to him, his mother and four sisters, were extremely concerned but were too far away and com-mitted to their own issues to do much. However, none of them (especially Maggie, who had not approved of Margaret for years) was distraught that Margaret was gone from the family. Later, Ferris’s brothers Ben and Fred would make sure his former wife did not get his ashes.

Throughout 1896, in an attempt to meet his fi nancial obligations, Fer-ris not only greatly diluted his interest in his Wheel Company, but also sold his ownership in his two engineering fi rms, G. W. G. Ferris and Company, and Ferris, Kaufman and Company, and in the Pittsburgh Construction Company. By November 11, 1896, his prized engineering companies be-longed to his partners. “He gave as his reason that he was tired of business and was going into consulting engineering for himself” (PCG 1896). In the fi nal analysis, though, the incredibly rapid rise and disastrous fall of his great invention during the nation’s fi rst great depression had broken him, fi nancially and in spirit.

On Wednesday, November 18, a week after he had sold his engineering companies, Ferris became seriously ill while at his hotel and was rushed to Pittsburgh’s Mercy Hospital. At fi rst it was thought he suffered from ex-haustion induced by overwork and worry, and from years of suffering the ravages of consumption. But he quickly began showing the symptoms of typhoid fever—a raging fever, red rash, vomiting, diarrhea, and excruciat-ing abdominal pain. Not uncommon in Pittsburgh during Ferris’s time, ty-phoid fever was caused by the bacillus Salmonella typhosa in contaminated food or water, usually the result of too little separation between sewage and drinking water. According to one source, “Friday, the patient showed signs


for the worse. He became delirious, and it was evident his illness was very serious. Friday night, the attending physician announced his condition as precarious. The doctors said his system was too far run down to withstand the ravages of the high fever” (ER 1896).

Any attempts to reach his family members failed. His estranged wife, not aware of the seriousness of Ferris’s condition, remained out of town. She said, “I was called to Cleveland on business” (TH 1898). Although no response came from Ferris’s wife or family, local newspapers kept tabs of the situation. Representative was this report in the Brooklyn Eagle:“George W. Ferris, who achieved fame through the medium of the Ferris Wheel at the world’s fair, is lying at Mercy Hospital in a very serious condi-tion and the authorities there say that his death is hourly expected. Days after he was taken to the hospital, his illness developed into an enlargement of the liver” (BE 1896).

On Sunday morning, November 22, at 11:00 a.m., Ferris passed away, alone again, with no one at his side. “He died suddenly at Mercy Hospital while I was absent,” declared Margaret (TH 1898). Ferris was only 37, three months shy of his thirty-eighth birthday. If there was a Carson Valley curse causing Ferris males to die young, he was the fi nal chapter in it. All three of the Ferris men who grew up in the Valley had died young, his brothers Albert at 46 and Eddie at 35. Ferris’s death certifi cate specifi ed typhoid fever as the offi cial cause of death, though a kidney aliment called Bright’s disease, also common in the 1890s, may have contributed to his demise.

When Ferris’s estranged wife fi nally arrived in Pittsburgh, she regis-tered at the Victoria Hotel, where she often stayed. She then visited her husband’s remains. When approached by reporters, Margaret refused to be interviewed. It would be several months later before she would grant an interview and speak out.

Most of the money Ferris had made during the World’s Fair was lost within three years of the event. “Friends believe that the fi nancial diffi culties resulting from his effort to keep the wheel going had much to do with has-tening Ferris’s death” (ER 1896). Other than a $25,000 insurance policy, Ferris’s wealth at the time of his death was mostly gone and his estate was in shambles. Also, it was concluded that his legal heirs were his 76-year-old mother and his two older brothers Ben and Fred, not his estranged wife. This state of affairs caused Margaret considerable anxiety. She said, “The estate was in a badly tangled condition, and I had worry of that. The result was nervous prostration” (TH 1898).

Although Ferris and his wife had been separated for some time and had not been to Canton as a couple for years, the Canton Evening Repositoryreported, “Both have been well thought of here [Canton]. There was even some thought that Ferris’s body will probably be brought here for burial” (CER 1896). At Ferris’s passing, the Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette sum-marized the engineer’s character: “Socially, the lovable nature of Mr. Ferris endeared him to all who knew him, and in this city [Pittsburgh] he had hosts of friends. It is well known that no one ever asked aid at his hands that he did not grant it” (PCG 1896).


Two of Ferris’s closest friends and engineering partners, Kaufman and McNaugher, said,

Up to within a few months of his death, he was always bright, hopeful and full of anticipation of good results from all the ventures he had at hand. Both he and his friends were sanguine of the successful outcome of the projects he had at hand, and that he would have been amply repaid for the long struggle, which was almost over. In the most darkened and troubled times, he was ever looking for the sunshine soon to come. He died a martyr to his ambition for fame and prominence. (Kaufman 1897)

Although engaged in many notable civil engineering projects in his ca-reer, the incredible engineering accomplishment Ferris will always be re-membered for is creating the signature attraction for the Columbian World’s Exposition. With it, he achieved international celebrity and immortality. His name remains synonymous with vertical amusement and observation wheels worldwide, and “Ferris wheel” remains the trade name for them all. Ferris will be known through the ages as the “father of sky wheels.”

What Ferris did and instigated as a daring, innovative, nineteenth-century American civil engineer, however, reached far wider than the effect of one innovative structure that incorporated a colossal, revolving steel ten-sion wheel. Looking at what happened after he passed away spotlights the impact he had not only in the United States but around the world.

Even though he never saw it, Ferris’s grand invention, still struggling fi nancially on Clark Street in Chicago when he died, had one grand hur-rah left.


CHAPTER TEN

Aftermath–Epilogue

Let no feeling of discouragement prey upon you, and in the end you are sure to succeed.

—Abraham Lincoln

Exceedingly fascinating, with an everpresent air of mystery about him while alive, George Ferris was, in many ways, even more mysterious

and intriguing when no longer on this Earth. His gigantic Wheel, one of the most remarkable engineering feats in history, was his fi rst and last such structure. Even though he was a towering and extraordinary fi gure living in an extraordinary time, none of his personal fi les or archival materials has survived. Because he had no children, and he and his wife had a strained re-lationship for the last few years of his life, no one was close enough to him to save his private papers or property.

At the time of his passing, all but one of his surviving family members lived a continent away—his aged mother, brother Ben, and sister Emma Barber in Riverside, California, and three sisters, Maggie Dangberg, Martha Schultz, and Mary Arbery, in Carson City, Nevada. Only his second-oldest brother Fred, who was in Galesburg, Illinois, lived fewer than a thousand miles from Pittsburgh. But the two were never close and had done nothing together as brothers growing up.

Peeling away the layers of mystery surrounding Ferris required close analysis of the correspondence and fi les kept by non-Ferris-family ac-quaintances and business colleagues, as well as news articles and public documents. From them, much has been gleaned about Ferris the person and about the infl uence he had on his and following generations. Just as the Eiffel Tower had indicated to the world the level of expertise possessed by French civil engineers in 1889, the Ferris Wheel did the same for the U.S. engineering community a few years later.

George W. G. Ferris’s funeral service was held on Tuesday, November 24, at 4:00 p.m., at the chapel of Samson’s Crematory in Pittsburgh. The brief announcement for it read, “Please omit fl owers. Friends are respec-tively invited. Interment private” (PCG 1896). No records exist indicating

AFTERMATH—EPILOGUE 115

who and how many, if any, people attended the service. Later, Ferris’s re-mains were cremated. His estranged wife Margaret’s attempt to obtain his ashes was turned down. Said the undertaker, Hudson Samson, “The dead man’s brothers [Fred and Ben] have the fi rst claim to his remains, and the administrator [of Ferris’s estate] is waiting to hear from them. The request of Mrs. Ferris for the ashes has been refused because the dead man left closer relatives” (PCG 1896). She and Ferris’s parting of the ways must have been much more serious than a separation.

Fifteen months after his funeral, Ferris’s estate was still unsettled and his remains were still in Samson’s possession. “Ferris’s ashes are being held by the undertaker in Pittsburgh because of unpaid funeral expenses,” re-ported the New York Times (NYT 1898). Samson responded by saying, “I am not holding the remains of inventor George G. W. Ferris for debt. My bill for $150 for funeral expenses has been approved by the Court, and I will get my money. I am simply holding the ashes until the administrator of the Ferris estate gives me orders for their disposition. The estate will be settled up in another month or so” (NYT 1898).

According to Brian O’Neal of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “The court appraisal of Ferris’s estate showed $300 cash.” In addition to Samson’s claim against his estate, three others stood out. Laura S. Rabb wanted “$274 for expenses and trips to Atlanta, Chicago, and Cincinnati,” while The Duquesne Club, Pittsburgh’s most exclusive businessmen’s club, was owed $92, and “G. W. Schmidt whiskey store was due $75. Ferris had been in there a number of times between February and August of 1896, making mostly four dollar purchases” (O’Neal 1996).

When hearing of Samson holding Ferris’s remains because of so small a bill, Alfred Noble (1844–1914), a highly respected U.S. civil engineer, sup-porter of Ferris, and future 1903 president of the ASCE, got involved. The New York Times reported that “Mr. Noble, the president of the Western Society of Engineers [based in Chicago], of which Mr. Ferris was a member, has taken up the investigation of the matter in a vigorous way, and has con-tacted authorities in Pittsburgh” (NYT 1898). How the “matter” was even-tually resolved and where Ferris’s remains fi nally ended up is unknown—the ingredients of a whodunit plot.

On January 19, 1897, less than two months after Ferris died, his as-sociate Luther Rice, who was managing the Wheel at the time, received an offi cial letter from the U.S. War Department. It began, “I am instructed by Major-General Nelson A. Miles, commanding U.S. Army, to request in-formation relative to the Ferris Wheel, erected at Chicago in 1893. This information is desired by General Miles for the purpose of making a com-parison of the remarkably short time required for the construction and erection of this huge structure, with the time required by the Ordnance establishments of this country to manufacture guns, gun carriages, etc.” (Letter from Miles’s offi ce to L. V. Rice at Ferris Wheel Company, Jan. 19, 1897, Washington, D.C.). Rice responded by penning his answers to the questions on the letter itself, both on its front and back. According to Ferris wheel historian Norman Anderson, “One cannot help but wonder if Rice


was tempted to add a note to the effect that business would proceed more rapidly in the War Department if they had someone like Ferris in charge” (Anderson 1992).

Three days after the letter was written, on January 22, 1897, a Chicago court presided over by Judge Burke entered a judgment for $84,000 in favor of the World’s Columbian Exposition against the Ferris Wheel Company. It had taken more than three years to resolve the case. The contract between the two parties stated that the Ferris Wheel Company was to retain all gate receipts until construction costs, up to $300,000, were paid. After that, the Exposition and the Wheel Company were to split the Wheel’s gross receipts, but the total amount the Exposition Company would receive was not to exceed $400,000. That would have required total gross receipts of at least $1.1 million, nearly 50% more than what was actually collected, mainly because attendance at the Chicago Fair was less than its supporters had projected and Ferris had been led to believe.

Ferris’s group rejected the language in the contract and claimed that the 50-50 distribution of gross revenues was not to begin until the full cost of construction of the Wheel was paid, and that amounted to $362,000, not $300,000. The company alleged that a signifi cant factor in building costs exceeding $300,000 was that the Exposition Committee delayed granting an offi cial concession to proceed with work for more than two weeks after the agreement between the two parties was signed. That caused additional foundation construction costs because of an unusually brutal winter, and extra manufacturing expenses due to the need to rush-order everything. Even with Ferris’s connections in the industry and the favors he called in, putting his orders ahead of others came at a premium.

Ferris’s group also argued that by not allowing Ferris to continue op-erating his Wheel for 60 days after the Exposition closed on October 30, as specifi ed in its agreement, his company lost considerable revenue. Before being forced to shut down, the last month of the Wheel’s operation (Oc-tober) was its best month, taking in $285,000, one-half of which went to the Exposition. If Ferris had been able to operate for the full term of his contract, earning considerably more income would have been possible. The Exposition really had nothing to lose since it received 50% of all passenger receipts while the Wheel remained on its grounds. The Exposition Com-mittee, however, was offi cious, stubborn, and malicious. In the end, Judge Burke sided with the Committee or, in essence, with the city of Chicago.

* * *

On March 23, Ferris’s beloved mother, Martha, died in Riverside, seven months short of her seventy-seventh birthday. She was buried next to her husband, George Sr., in a Riverside cemetery. A hardy, self-reliant, and reli-gious soul exemplifying the admirable pioneering spirit of women living on America’s western frontier in the 1800s, Martha had much to be proud of in her children. She celebrated in their achievements and suffered in their setbacks.


Her youngest son George’s recent horrendous fall from the highest pin-nacle of his profession, and his untimely death four months earlier, must have hurt her exceedingly and been diffi cult for her to resolve. However, she suffered through it silently and with grace and dignity. That she lost her three Nevada-raised sons relatively early in their adulthood could be considered grounds for the belief that a curse had fallen on the Ferris men raised in Carson Valley. The 76-year-old, church-going family matriarch, however, was not one to believe in such things. Curses and superstition did not fi t her belief system, but the wrath—and forgiveness—of God did.

* * *

In August, 1897, eight months after his death, Ferris’s estranged widow Margaret made headline news across the country. It was reported that she had married a divine healer whom she had only recently met, Francis Schlatter. He was hailed in some circles as truly a man of God, maybe even the reincarnation of Jesus Christ himself. However, in other circles (which made up the majority), he was considered a quack, a rumpled, scruffi ly dressed wild man with long, unkempt hair.

Distraught and still in shock after her husband’s death, and by the fact that she was not considered heir to the Ferris estate (meager as it was), and that she was no longer welcome (if she ever had been) in the Ferris family, Margaret’s health deteriorated. It was known her thinking became jumbled at times. At the urging of her family and a close friend, Maggie Gaul, a well-known “test medium” who assisted spiritualists in their work, Margaret had gone to see Schlatter. He was holding healing sessions at Brady’s Lake, a favorite summer resort for spiritualists, just outside of Canton, Ohio.

To get to the lake resort required taking a train, followed by a three-mile bus ride. In her fi rst and only media interview after Ferris’s passing, Mrs. Ferris told the Tyrone Herald

At the lake I was so weak that they had to lift me from the bus. At the hotel they gave me whisky and milk, and that strengthened me. In the crowd with all the others, I received Schlatter’s blessing. He held me by the hand for an instant and mumbled a prayer just the same as he did to all the rest. That evening going home, he asked me if I felt better. I had more faith in the effi cacy of the whisky and milk than I did in his healing powers, but not wanting to offend the man, I told him I was much better. Then he offered to come to my house and give me treatment. I told him he could call at 11 o’clock the next morning. I even did that on the advice of my family, for I had no idea that his incantations could do any good. (TH 1898)

After three healing sessions in Canton, all with her family present ac-cording to Margaret, her health did not improve. She said, “I did not want


him to come any more” (TH 1898). But Schlatter had become completely enamored with the attractive woman and proposed marriage. She refused but he went ahead and, over her objection, took out a marriage license. For it, the alleged holy man listed his age as 41 and her age as 31.

Margaret said she was completely surprised by Schlatter’s actions and was thoroughly confused “when they came in and told me the newsboys were crying all about the marriage of the divine healer to Mrs. Ferris” (TH 1898). Local and national newspapers carried stories of the marriage and, reported the Fort Wayne News, “The city [Canton] is agog discussing the news.” (FWN 1897). Margaret ignored the situation and avoided contact with the “divine healer,” but he persistently followed her everywhere.

After days of this and amid rumors that she was “out of her mind,” Mrs. Ferris left town. She said, “I wanted to get away from it all and hur-riedly decided to come to Pittsburgh. Everybody by that time was watching me and, in some way, Schlatter learned that I was coming to the Victoria Hotel [her favorite hotel in Pittsburgh]. I appealed to Mr. Dellenbach for protection and he gave orders that the healer should not be admitted” (TH 1898). Schlatter, however, spent the night at the hotel drinking, carrying on, and sending notes to Mrs. Ferris, which she refused. She said, “Next morning, Mr. Dellenbach came to me and said Schlatter was acting like a wild man. He asked me to meet the man for a few minutes and see if that would not quiet him. I fi nally consented to a meeting in the presence of my friends” (TH 1898).

About the encounter, Margaret related,

Schlatter was a terrible picture. One could tell he had been drinking. His long, greasy hair, which was wont to lie back, now veered about like the four winds of heaven. He was a fright and the awful condition of my nerves made the effect of his appearance upon me so frightful that I al-most lost the power of speech. I demanded to know why he had persecuted me and told him I never wanted to see him again. He coldly announced that he had a marriage license and intended to marry me. I told him I thought he was a very cruel person and fl ed from the room. I have not seen him since. (TH 1898)

The Wheel’s Last Hurrah

In 1903, the Ferris Wheel, whose seven-year reign on North Clark Street had failed fi nancially, was purchased by the Chicago House Wrecking Com-pany. During the winter of 1903–1904, the Wheel was taken down and loaded aboard 175 railroad fl atcars bound for St. Louis, heading for what would be the mighty Wheel’s third and fi nal location—and its fi nal hurrah. “A force of 95 men took nearly 72 days to take down the wheel. Approxi-


mately 4,200 tons of parts were transported” (Harris 1999). In St. Louis, Ferris’s Wheel delighted many thousands of fairgoers once more. It would be the main attraction at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, which commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase.

The Chicago House Wrecking Company was one of the most unique and original concerns in the United States at the time, the forerunner of the modern-day outlet store. Its operations included acres of warehouses, showrooms, and yards, and two dozen departments and a huge mail-order catalog. Said Eleanor Harris, daughter of the founder, “The Company was wreckers and dismantlers, but also preservers and repairers” (Harris 1999).

Before acquiring the Ferris Wheel, Chicago House projects included the dismantling of the Columbian Exposition (including all of its White City structures that had so pleased Burnham, the Fair’s head architect), the Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha, the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, and large post offi ces in places like Cleveland and Chicago. Later, when President Teddy Roosevelt purchased rights to the equipment and im-provements of France’s failed effort at the Panama Canal, the company took on the enormous task of removing and salvaging the remains of 20 years of work left by insolvent French contractors.

In St. Louis, at the same time as its 1904 World Exposition, the fi rst Olympics ever held in the United States were launched. Offi cially, the event was called the Games of the III Olympiad. Because of European tension caused by the Russo-Japanese War and the logistical diffi culty of getting to St. Louis, many of the world’s top athletes stayed away; consequently, the Olympics were not well attended by the international community. Also, the games were lost in the hubbub of the World’s Fair. Of the 94 Olympic events staged, only 42 included athletes from outside of the United States, and America, by a wide margin, won the majority of medals. For the fi rst time, these medals were actually made of gold, silver, and bronze for fi rst, second, and third place.

Those attending the Olympics either rode or at least observed the Ferris Wheel at a distance. It towered over everything around it in St. Louis, as it had in Chicago. The tall, revolving Wheel in the center of the fairgrounds was popular with fairgoers and was the star of yet another exposition. Its owners claimed, “There was no question but that the Ferris Wheel was doing a better business at St. Louis than any other concession upon the grounds” (Harris 1999). The Wheel reportedly carried more than 1.5 mil-lion passengers and turned a profi t of $215, 000 during the event.

At the close of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, Chicago House ne-gotiated with the operators of the Coney Island amusement park to move the Wheel to the New York seacoast. Several minor modifi cations to the Wheel were discussed, for instance, “The lighting of the wheel can be so ar-ranged that the wheel will seem to be a revolving mass of fi re. This, and the wheel itself, can be seen by every vessel coming into the Port of New York for hours before they can see any other landmark” (Anderson 1992). But, as with Ferris’s discussions with the Coney Island group ten years earlier, Chicago House’s negotiations also fell through.


The wrecking company’s next move, however, differed considerably from the one Ferris made. In reality, he had been too close to his brainchild and too infatuated—dreaming it would become an icon on the order of the Eiffel Tower. Chicago House had no such dream. The wrecking company had the contract to dismantle and remove all structures and facilities at the St. Louis Exposition, just as it had done earlier for the Chicago Exposition in 1893. This time, included in its assignment was removing the huge steel and iron observation wheel that it owned.

Before the Wheel came down, though, the United States endured its worst earthquake in modern history—the Great San Francisco Earthquake of April 18, 1906. The catastrophe destroyed buildings and set off deadly fi res citywide. Property damage was staggering; thousands were injured and 2,000 to 3,000 people lost their lives. The event and its horrendous num-bers sobered the nation. It made for a somber backdrop for the fi nal hours in the life of the 13-year-old Ferris Wheel.

The end of the greatest wheel ever built, the original Ferris Wheel (to many, the symbol of America’s engineering prowess near the end of the nine-teenth century), came on May 11, 1906, a bright, clear, warm, and sunny Missouri spring day. It was dynamited into a junk heap of tangled metal. But the Wheel died hard. It took 200 pounds of dynamite in two stages to make it fall. Salvaged and sold for $75,950 were the Wheel’s boilers, en-gines, plate glass, opera chairs, and 2,700 tons of structural iron and steel (eye-beams and rods). According to Eleanor Harris, its massive main shaft, made of specially hardened steel, was shipped on two fl atcars to the wreck-ing company’s facilities in Chicago. “This last remnant of the once-proud Wheel remained in that facility until 1918 when, with acetylene torches, the shaft was cut up and sold for scrap” (Harris 1999). Interestingly, not every-one is convinced of this; several St. Louis historians believe that because the axle was so large it was buried near where the Wheel stood in 1906.

Many rumors have sprung up over the years alleging that certain parts of the Wheel can be found in various and sundry structures around the country. According to journalists Perry Duis and Glen Holt, “Legend has it that many gracefully arching bridges in the Midwest were built from parts of the Wheel’s rims” (Duis and Holt 1981). Some bolts, nuts, and other items displayed at a St. Louis museum allegedly came from the Wheel, and local St. Louis folklore holds that certain Wheel pieces and parts of its foundations were buried with the rest of the Exposition’s rubble in make-shift landfi lls at the city’s Forest Park. But none of these claims has been substantiated, and recent efforts to locate the Wheel’s axle there have been unsuccessful. To date, no documentation on where any parts of the Wheel might have ended up has ever been compiled.

Smaller Portable Wheels

Few people who attended either the Chicago or St. Louis Exposition and rode the Ferris Wheel easily forgot the enormous, circulating, engineering


marvel. Among those whose lives the Wheel changed was William Sulli-van, a budding entrepreneur from a small town in downstate Illinois. After riding the huge machine several times at the 1893 Columbian Exposition, and studying its details, Sullivan began dreaming about building a smaller, portable version of it. He spent the next seven years working out its de-tails. Finally, in 1900, he had a working prototype. It was 45 feet high with 12 seats.

Sullivan successfully operated his wheel in a park in nearby Jackson-ville, Illinois, for a few months. After that, he took the wheel on the road to local fairs and celebrations in other small Illinois towns, even to Ferris’s birthplace, Galesburg. Sullivan then started manufacturing operations to build more wheels. In 1906, he founded the Eli Bridge Company to fabri-cate small to medium-sized Ferris wheels in quantity, many of them suited for permanent installations.

By 1919, the Eli Bridge Company was the world’s leading producer of Ferris wheels and had moved into expanded facilities in Jacksonville, Illinois, where it resides today. In the mid-1900s, Eli Bridge-produced Fer-ris wheels were seemingly found everywhere. Norman Anderson observed, “In fact, one was found, disassembled and covered by dead vegetation, in a cave in Guadalcanal by a platoon of marines during World War II” (Ander-son 1992). When the Sullivan-founded company celebrated its 100th an-niversary in 2006, it pointed to approximately 2,000 Ferris wheels it had produced and operated across North America and around the world.

More Legacies

Even though Ferris’s career had been cut short, he was the mentor and/or a role model to numerous young engineers who became notable civil engi-neers. Many of them were graduates of his alma mater, RPI, who worked for him. Among the wide array of engineers he employed, helping launch their careers, were Frank Osborn, Luther Rice, James Hallsted, William Gronau, David McNaugher, and Gustave Kaufman. All of them became owners or partners in highly successful engineering concerns.

Ferris’s up-beat personality, “always bright, hopeful, and ever look-ing for the sunshine to come,” inspired everyone around him (Kaufman 1896). His attitude motivated others to reach for their own highest level of achievement and try new things. When the newly graduated Gronau, for instance, was stumped during the structural analysis of the Ferris Wheel and was ready to give up, Ferris gave him direction, “fatherly” advice, and encouragement. This resulted in the young engineer developing new meth-ods for calculating and proving stresses for large tension wheels, something that had never been done before. He accomplished this feat long before and without the use of modern-day computers.

By challenging young engineers to greatness, Ferris contributed sig-nifi cantly to forging the future use of structural steel in large-scale build-ing construction. His leadership was key in developing methods for testing


steel, and procedures for designing and inspecting structural steel struc-tures. Along with fellow pioneers and colleagues like Robert Hunt and Julian Kennedy, Ferris helped establish international standards for the use of structural steel in multistory and complex buildings, bridges, and other sophisticated structures.

For his contributions, Hunt received ASCE’s John Fritz Medal and was named the second recipient of the Western Society of Engineers (WSE)’s Washington Award for “his pioneer work in the development of the steel industry in the U.S.” (President Herbert Hoover was its fi rst recipient.)

Kennedy was in charge of Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead Plant in Pitts-burgh. There, instead of making steel ingots and bars to be sold as raw material, like its competitors, the Homestead produced beams, girders, and other structural shapes. The Kennedy-run plant opened its doors just as the skyscraper age began and the building of steel bridges boomed. The Homestead furnished the steel for both the history-making Eads Bridge in St. Louis and the world’s fi rst skyscraper, William Le Baron Jenney’s Home Insurance Company Building in Chicago.

Ferris not only inspected countless steel bridges of all designs and confi gurations, he was also the design engineer-of-record on a number of innovative ones. Even though Ferris put his imprint on hundreds of im-portant steel bridges through his inspection and testing engineering fi rm, few of them remain. Of the notable bridges on which he was chief de-sign engineer, none still exists. His Ninth Street Bridge over the Allegheny in Pittsburgh was demolished in the mid-1920s and replaced by a larger eye-bar suspension bridge, which remains today. Despite the distinction of his Central Bridge over the Ohio in Cincinnati being one of the fi rst major “standard” cantilever truss bridges built, no attempt was made by preservationists to save the bridge when it was blown up in three stages in 1992. It was replaced in 1995 by a new four-lane bridge, the Taylor-Southgate Bridge. The only remaining piece of Ferris’s 1890 bridge is one stone abutment wall.

Although none of Ferris’s bridges remain and the incredible Wheel for which he gained fame (but little fortune) is gone, many duplications of his great invention abound. Everywhere there is something: toys, music boxes, paperweights, jewelry, fl ower pot holders, table lamps, garden statues, wa-terfalls, model-making kits, placemats, calendars, paintings, posters, books, videos, postcards, and the list goes on. In fact, there is even a newsletter devoted to Ferris wheels, their history, and current events dealing with them: the Ferris Wheel Newsletter, produced by Dr. Norman Anderson for an international audience (Ferris Wheel Newsletter, Norman D. Anderson, ed., bimonthly publication from June 1993 to present, Raleigh, N.C.)

In Austria, a Ferris Wheel Day occurs every year on the 14th of Febru-ary to celebrate the birth of George Ferris. It is a particularly wonderful day in Vienna, especially for school children, because of Austria’s well-known giant Ferris wheel in Prater Park, which many consider one of Vienna’s great city treasures. Dozens of memorable weddings take place high up the wheel every year.


* * *

The fi nal resting place of George Ferris’s ashes still remains a mystery, al-though many have tried to determine their whereabouts. Searches have been made of cemeteries at Canton, Pittsburgh, Galesburg, Carson City, and Riverside, but nothing has been found. This does not necessarily mean his remains are not located at one of those locations, only that exactly where they are hidden has yet to be found. Norman Anderson commented, “Probably as much effort has been expended trying to fi nd surviving pieces of the Ferris Wheel as had been devoted to locating the fi nal resting place of George Ferris’s ashes. The search for the remains of both seem to have particular fascination and from time to time a new item appears that adds to the mystique” (Anderson 1992).

In addition to questions about where parts from the Wheel went, what about its drawings and calculations? Where are they? And where are the shop drawings used in the fabrication of the Wheel’s numerous manufac-tured parts? And, do the remains of the Wheel’s concrete foundations still exist at its North Clark Street and St. Louis locations? Myths, rumors, and legends abound about these mysteries.

However, the whereabouts of the Wheel’s foundations, at its Chicago Fair site on the Midway Plaisance, is no longer a mystery. On September 15, 2000, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that while excavating for a $4 million skating rink and warming house (a joint project of the Univer-sity of Chicago and the Chicago Park district), the contractor unearthed the Wheel’s massive underground footings. Dave King, the project man-ager for the rink, said, “We had an inkling there might be something out there because we knew the Columbian Exposition was on the Midway. We had in the back of our minds, wouldn’t it be kind of cool if we found something?” (CST 2000). When a University of Illinois archaeologist and surveyors confi rmed that the remains uncovered were Ferris’s historic substructures, it was cause for celebration, and ghosts from the past were recalled.

No photographs have been uncovered of Ferris’s wife Margaret, or of him and his wife together, or of him as a child or as a student at either the Oakland military school or RPI. If some are ever found, they would be priceless, as would be any of his personal papers, drawings, or calculations.

Ferris, Kaufman and Company was renamed Kaufman and Company shortly after Ferris died. It ceased to exist in 1898, when Kaufman closed down the operation. G. W. G. Ferris and Company was renamed Hallsted and McNaugher, with its headquarters in the Rookery Building in Chicago. In 1902, it was absorbed by the fi rm of Robert W. Hunt and Company, which became one of the largest inspection, testing, and consulting engi-neering fi rms in the world, with an international reputation.

Both the Pittsburgh Construction Company and the Ferris Wheel Company, formed by Ferris specifi cally to build and operate the Ferris Wheel, remained in existence until December 1920, when they were dissolved by court order as a result of failure to fi le annual reports as required by Illinois state law.


Daniel Burnham, Ferris’s on-and-off-again nemesis during the Chicago Exposition, had a stroke in Heidelberg, Germany, in 1912, while on a fam-ily trip. He had been suffering with diabetes and colitis. This condition, combined with food poisoning and a foot infection, sent him into a coma. He never came out of it and died on June 1. Wrote Erik Larson, “For Burn-ham personally the [Chicago] fair had been an unqualifi ed triumph. It al-lowed him to fulfi ll his pledge to his parents to become the greatest architect in America. Both Harvard and Yale granted him honorary master’s degrees in recognition of his achievement in building the fair” (Larson 2003). Win-ning these prestigious awards likely satisfi ed Burnham, especially because neither university had accepted him as a young undergraduate when he applied to their schools of architecture. Not getting into Harvard or Yale haunted him for years and put a chip on his shoulder. Burnham’s apprecia-tion of architecture was acute, but apparently the signifi cance of engineer-ing achievement escaped him.

Because of this shortcoming, and a myopic decision to remove rather than retain the “star” of Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair, America lost a golden opportunity. As a result, generations of Americans were robbed of an iconic engineering masterpiece. Instead of the Ferris Wheel becom-ing a national American symbol, as the 1889 Eiffel Tower did for France, countries other than the United States are claiming the Wheel as theirs.Today, increasingly taller, giant tension wheels are being erected as status symbols for their countries, mostly in the Far East and Europe. Fewer people than ever recognize the origin of these observation wheels as being American.

* * *

On May 30, 1927, police in the Richmond, California, were summoned to a boarding house at 19 Park Place to investigate the death of a middle-aged woman. They found the fully clothed woman lying on top of her bed. On the nearby end table were two unmailed letters to her sisters, Mrs. Joseph Marven of Richmond and Mrs. Charles Backus of Canton, Ohio. The de-ceased woman, Margaret (Beatty) Ferris, had managed the boarding house owned by Mrs. Marven. Police determined that no foul play was involved. Mrs. Ferris apparently died of a heart attack.

In her obituary, Margaret was listed as being 56, which would have made her birth year 1870 or 1871, and age 15 or 16 when she married Ferris (Rich-mond News [obituary], May 31, 1927). A different age than 56 is computed if she was 31 as noted on the alleged marriage license Schlatter had taken out in 1897. That would make her 60 or 61 at the time of her passing, her birth date 1866, and her age 20 when she married Ferris. She never remarried after Ferris passed away, remaining a childless widow until her death.

Two years before Ferris’s estranged wife passed away, his oldest liv-ing brother Fred died in 1925 in Galesburg at age 82. In 1929, two of his other siblings died—Ben in Riverside at age 84 and Emma in Long Beach, California, at age 78. Ten years later, in 1939, Martha Elizabeth died in


Carson City at age 82. Ferris’s strong-willed sister Mag-gie lived to be almost 100. She was 98 when she passed away in 1946, in Alameda, California. The youngest of Ferris’s siblings, Mame, lived to age 90. She passed way in San Francisco in 1951.

* * *

In 1995, the Rensselaer Alumni Association established a special Hall of Fame “to preserve and celebrate the long and exceptional heritage of RPI graduates.” Inducted in its fi rst class of honorees was George Ferris (RPI 2007). Among the others included in this fi rst group of distinguished en-gineers were Washington Roebling of Brooklyn Bridge fame, and Stephen Van Rensselaer, the founder of the college. Their accomplishments, along with Ferris’s, have been etched in the glass windows lining Thomsen Hall in RPI’s Darrin Communications Center.

Over the years, Ferris’s tension-wheel invention has been the inspira-tion for wheels worldwide, with some of the fi rst and most celebrated ones appearing across the Atlantic in England, France, and Austria around the turns of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Today, countless numbers of Ferris wheels revolve at fairs, carnivals, and amusement and theme parks around the globe. Of particular note are the heights twenty-fi rst- centurywheels are reaching; the new ones are trying to best their predecessors to

The British Airways London Eye. From 2000 until 2006, it was the world’s tallest observation (Ferris) wheel at 443 feet.

Source: Courtesy of British Airways London Eye.


be the world titleholder, a source of national pride not unlike having the tallest skyscraper.

For seven years, from 2000 until 2006, the $125 million Lon-don Millennium Wheel (British Airways’s London Eye), towering over the Thames River and over-looking the city’s sights, reigned as the world’s largest Ferris wheel (or “observation wheel,” as the British prefer to call it). In 2006, China took the tallest wheel title away from England with the debut of the 525-foot-tall Star of Nan-chang Ferris wheel, though some would argue the Nanchang wheel is not a true Ferris wheel because its spokes act in compression, not tension.

On March 1, 2008, the 541-foot-tall Singapore Flyer opened for business and claimed the world’s record for Ferris wheels. Singa-

pore’s hold on the title, though, will be short-lived. Being planned for 2009 or 2010 are 600-plus-foot tall wheels in Dubai, Berlin, and Beijing, all to be erected by the same non-U.S. fi rm, the Great Wheel Corporation. The company also has a 400-foot giant wheel underway in Orlando, Florida, which will overshadow the Texas Star (213 feet) in Dallas as the largest operating Ferris wheel in North America. Each of these towering marvels, with the exception of the Nanchang structure, are tension-spoke structures based on concepts de-veloped by Ferris and his engineers in the nineteenth century. At 682 feet, The Beijing Great Wheel will be the biggest Ferris wheel in existence.

Although signifi cantly taller than Ferris’s original Chi-cago Wheel, none of the twenty-fi rst-century monster wheels

bests his machine in passenger capacity. His great observation wheel had 36 cabins with seats for 40 and standing room for 20, for a total passenger capacity of 60 people each or 2,160 people total per revolution. The Lon-don Eye has 32 capsules that can handle 25 people each, for a capacity of 800 per revolution. Singapore’s wheel carries 784 people per revolution, with 28 cabins holding 28 people each. The Beijing Great Wheel will come the closest to the original Ferris Wheel in capacity, with a total capability of 1,920 people (48 capsules holding 40 people each).

The 541-foot-tall Singapore Flyer became the world’s big-gest Ferris wheel when it began circling in 2008. (China’s Beijing Great Wheel will ex-ceed the Flyer’s height in 2009 or 2010, when it tops out at 682 feet.)

Source: Courtesy of Singapore Flyer Pte Ltd.


Similar to skyscrapers, there seems to be an unquenchable quest—a na-tional pride—to build the tallest Ferris observation wheel. Who will build the next record-holder and where will it show up? Only time will tell. What cannot be disputed, however, is that it all began in America in 1893 with a dashing, young civil engineer raised on a ranch in western Nevada.

A superstar of his day, George Ferris exemplifi ed the can-do spirit, bold entrepreneurship, optimism, and building acumen of America’s daring nine-teenth-century engineering geniuses. A valiant and tragic fi gure, not unlike the heroes in an F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway classic, Ferris rose to the greatest heights of his profession, became an admired celebrity, and suffered his dreams, fortunes, and personal life turning to dust. His legacy as the man who created the greatest wheel ever built, however, will endure for time immemorial. So will his name forever be identifi ed with revolving observation wheels making circles in the sky.


APPENDIX A

Chronology

1634—Jeffrey Ferris immigrates to America from Leicester, England.1775—The American Revolutionary War begins.1776—The Declaration of Independence is signed on July 4.1798—George Washington becomes the fi rst president of the United States

of America.1836—Ferris’s grandfather, Silvanus, moves the family from New York to

Illinois.1837—Galesburg, Illinois, is founded by pioneers, mostly from New York.

Knox College is established the same year. Ferris family members are key to the success of both.

1859—George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. (George Ferris) is born in Gales-burg on February 14.

1860—Abraham Lincoln elected sixteenth president of the United States.1861—The American Civil War begins. The Confederate Army captures

Fort Sumter.1864—George Ferris, Sr. (George Sr.) moves his family from Illinois to Ne-

vada, settling on a ranch in the Carson Valley.1865—The Civil War ends. President Lincoln is assassinated.1869—The American Transcontinental Railroad is completed, the fi rst

transcontinental rail line in the world.1871—The George Ferris, Sr. family moves to Carson City, Nevada.1873—George Ferris enters the Oakland Military Academy in Oakland,

California.1873—The Eads Bridge over the Missouri River at St. Louis is completed, a

record-setting arch bridge that, for the fi rst time ever, makes exten-sive use of steel as a structural system.

1876—Ferris graduates from high school and enrolls at Rensselaer Poly-technic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York, with plans of becoming a civil engineer.

1881—Ferris receives a degree in civil engineering from RPI and goes to work for the J. H. Ledlie Company in New York City.

APPENDIX A 129


1883—The Brooklyn Bridge opens to the public. The record-setting suspen-sion structure serves notice to the world that American engineers have arrived as a force of the future.

1886—George Ferris marries Margaret Ann Beatty on September 18 in Canton, Ohio.

1886—Ferris founds G. W. G. Ferris Engineering Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

1889—The Johnstown Flood dam failure. The collapse of this man-made dam in central Pennsylvania is one of the most devastating disasters in America history, causing engineers to ponder the ethics and re-sponsibility of their profession.

1890—In partnership with former RPI classmate Gustave Kaufman, Ferris establishes Ferris and Kaufman Engineers to specialize in the design and building of steel bridges.

1892—George Ferris proposes a giant structural-steel tension wheel to the Columbian Exposition Committee to “out-Eiffel” Gustave Eiffel’s Tower in Paris.

1893—The greatest wheel ever built, the Ferris Wheel, debuts at the World’s Fair in Chicago on June 21.

1894—The Panic of 1893 produces a major U.S. depression, crippling many industries (including American railroads) and bringing construction to a standstill nationally. It greatly affected American consulting en-gineers like Ferris.

1896—William McKinley is elected the twenty-fi fth president of the United States, replacing Grover Cleveland, who was blamed for the coun-try’s great depression of the 1890s.

1896—An ailing George Ferris enters Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh on No-vember 18.

1897—A copy of Ferris’s Wheel erected in Prater Park in Vienna, Austria. It becomes the longest-operating Ferris wheel in history.

1904—The Ferris Wheel is again the centerpiece of a World’s Fair, the St. Louis Exposition.

1985—The Texas Star, built by the SDC Corporation in Reggio, Emilia, Italy, is shipped to Dallas, Texas, to become North America’s tallest operating Ferris wheel at 213 feet (52 feet shorter than George Fer-ris’s original 1893 wheel).

1998—Ferris inducted into Rensselaer’s Alumni Hall of Fame along with Washington Roebling and Stephen Van Rensselaer, the university’s founder.

2000—The London Eye, the world’s tallest Ferris wheel at 443 feet, opens to the public. It becomes one of London’s top tourist attractions.

2008—The Singapore Flyer, at a height of 541 feet, becomes the tallest Fer-ris wheel in the world. It will be surpassed in 2009 or 2010 by the 682-foot-tall Beijing Great Wheel.

APPENDIX B

George Ferris Family Tree

1. Jeffrey Ferris (1610–1666). His wife’s fi rst name was Mary. Jeffrey and Mary’s children:

1. John 2. Peter 3. Joseph 4. Mary 5. James2. James Ferris (1643–1726). His wife’s name is unknown. James’s

children: 1. Hannah 2. Mary 3. Samuel 4. Nathaniel 5. James (the second)3. James Ferris II (1699–1739). His wife’s fi rst name was Mary. James

and Mary’s children: 1. Mary 2. Sarah 3. James (the third) 4. Hannah 5. Sylvanus4. Sylvanus Ferris (1737–1824). Wife, Mary Mead (1742–1822). Syl-

vanus and Mary’s children: 1. Henry (1763–1808) 2. Mary Ann “Molly” (1766–1840) 3. Hannah (1768–1846) 4. Silvanus (In historical records, the spelling of the name has been

both Silvanus and Sylvanus. For the purposes of this book, we will use Sylvanus for the older man and Silvanus for his son.)

5. Sarah (1776–1857)

APPENDIX B 131


6. Mary Elizabeth (1778–1778) 7. Gideon (1780–1854) 8. James (1783–1857) 9. Betsy (1785–1863)5. Silvanus Ferris (1773–1861). Wife, Sally Maria Olmstead (1779–

1845). Silvanus and Sally’s children: 1. Silvanus Western (1799–1887) 2. Nathan Olmstead (1801–1850) 3. Sally Maria (1803–1803) 4. Timothy Harvey (1805–1891) 5. William Mead (1807–1883) 6. Henry (1809–1891) 7. Laura (1811–1831) 8. Harriet Newell (1816–1851) 9. George Washington Gale6. George W. G. Ferris, Sr. (1818–1895). Wife, Martha Edgerton Hyde

(1820–1897). George and Martha’s children: 1. Albert Roland “A.R.” (1841–1887) 2. Frederick Hyde “Fred” (1843–1925) 3. Benjamin Hyde “Ben” (1845–1929) 4. Harriet Clementine (1847–1849) 5. Margaret Gale “Maggie” (1848–1946) 6. Emma “California” (1851–1929) 7. Edmond Ray “Eddie” (1854–1889) 8. Martha Elizabeth (1857–1939) 9. George Washington Gale, Jr. 10. Mary Amanda “Mame” (1861–1951)7. George W. G. Ferris, Jr. (1859–1896). Wife, Margaret Ann Beatty

(c. 1867–1927). No children.

APPENDIX C

Details of the Ferris Wheel

Ferris told The Review of Reviews reporter Carl Snyder that he believed his Ferris Wheel “developed to a degree hitherto never realized the ca-

pacities of a tension spoke” and that it was a highly refi ned tension and perfect pinion wheel. He equated its operation as perfect a pinion wheel as that of “the little wheel that goes fl icking back and forth in your watch.” He said,

In all that immense diameter there is less defl ection pro-portionately, from a true circle, than from the pinion wheel of the most perfect watch made. This is due to the fact that it has, instead of stiff spokes, the tension or jointed spokes. When I fi rst proposed to build a tension wheel of this diameter, the feat was regarded as impos-sible. It was held that the spoke rods on the upper side of the wheel at any given moment, instead of sustaining the weight of the upper part of the wheel, would, from their own weight as they hung vertically, pull down that arc of the wheel which they bore upon, and thus cause the wheel to become elliptic. As matter of fact, they do nothing of the kind. There is absolutely no defl ection from the per-fect circle.

[…] Considering some of the mechanical diffi culties in the construction of the Wheel, you note that it stands di-rectly east and west. Thus the southern side of the Wheel receives the entire brunt of the sun’s rays, whereas, the northern side is not only shaded by the southern but by the cars as well, causing a differential in expansion vary-ing from the heat to which it is subjected of from three to six inches. All of these problems had, of course, to be met, for even this slight variation of three to six inches in the total diameter of 250 feet would be suffi cient unless

APPENDIX C 133


properly dealt with to cause a disturbance in the working gear.

[…] Under the big wheel itself Ferris set two sprockets or cogged wheels and over them he threw an immense endless driving chain.

The latter plays over the cogs of the sprocket wheels and those of the great wheel itself. But in order that this be effective as a motive power, it was required that this enor-mous bulk should be a perfect pinion wheel—that is to say, a circle so perfect that its periphery will strike a given point tangent to the wheel equally throughout the entire revolution. Otherwise, of course, if the wheel lost its per-fect curve, it would ‘miss a cog’ and become unmanage-able. (Snyder 1893)

One of the most concise and encompassing descriptions of the Ferris Wheel was given in the offi cial press packet the Ferris Wheel Company pro-vided to the media in 1893 when the Wheel debuted:

The Wheel is comprised of two Wheels of the same size, connected and held together with rods and struts, which, however, do not approach closer than 20 feet to the pe-riphery. Each Wheel has for its outline a curved, hollow, square iron beam, 25.5 inches by 19 inches. At a distance of 40 feet within this circle is another circle of a lighter beam. These beams are called crowns, and are connected and held

The Ferris Wheel at the Chicago World’s Exposition in 1893.


APPENDIX C 135

together by an elaborate truss-work. Within this smaller circle there are no beams, and at a distance there appears to be nothing. But at the center of the great Wheel is an im-mense steel axle, 32 inches thick and 45 feet in length.

Each of the twin Wheels, where the axle passed through it, is provided with a large iron hub, 16 feet in diameter. Between these hubs and the inner crowns there are no connections except spoke rods, 2.5 inches in diameter, ar-ranged in pairs, 123 feet apart at the crown connections. At a distance they looked like mere spider webs, and the Wheel seems dangerously devoid of substantial support. The explanation for this is that the Ferris Wheel—at least inside the smaller crowns—is constructed on the principle of the bicycle Wheel. The lower half is suspended from the axle by the spoke rods running downward, and the upper half of the Wheel is supported by the lower half. All the spoke rods above the axle, when it was in any given posi-tion, might be removed, and the Wheel would be as solid as it would be with them. The only difference is that the Ferris Wheel hangs by its axle, while a bicycle Wheel rests on the ground, and the weight is applied downward on the axle.

The 36 carriages of the great Wheel are hung on its pe-riphery at equal intervals. Each car is 27 feet long, 13 feet wide and 9 feet high. It has a heavy frame of steel, but is covered externally with wood. It has a door at each end, and fi ve broad plate-glass windows on each side. The Wheel with its cars and passengers weigh about 1,200 tons and, therefore, needs something substantial to hold it up. Its axle is supported, therefore, on two skeleton steel towers, pyra-midal in form, one at each end of it. They are 40 by 50 feet at the bottom, and six feet square at the top, and about 140 feet high, the side next to the Wheel being perpendicular [vertical], and the other sides slanting. Each tower has four great feet, and each foot rests on an underground concrete foundation of 20 by 20 by 20 feet. Cross-bars of steel are laid at the bottom of the concrete, and the feet of the tower are connected with and bolted to them with steel rods.

Each of the 36 cars have 40 fancy, revolving chairs, made of twisted-steel, wire and screwed to the fl oor. It weighs 13 tons, and with 40 seated passengers will weigh three tons more. It is suspended from the periphery of the Wheel by an steel axle 6.5 inches in diameter, which runs through the roof. It is provided with a conductor to open the doors, preserve order and give information. The Wheel is never left to itself, but is always directly and constantly controlled by a steam engine. The machinery is very similar


to that used by the powerhouses of cable car companies. It operates a north-south iron shaft 12 inches in diameter, with great cog Wheels at each end, by means of which the power is applied at each side of the Wheel.

The Wheel is 250 feet in diameter, 785 feet in circum-ference and 30 feet wide, and is elevated 15 feet above the ground for a total height of 265 feet. The great Wheel is also provided with brakes. Near the north and south ends of the main shaft are two 10-foot Wheels with smooth faces and girdled with steel bands. These bands terminate a little to one side in a large Westinghouse air brake. If, therefore, anything should break, and the engine fails to work, the air can be turned into the air brake, and the steel band tight-ened until a Wheel in the whole machine can turn.

The feat of lighting the Wheel by electricity is consid-ered by all the experts to be one of the most remarkable and interesting of the Fair. The great diffi culty to overcome was in getting the current on the shaft (as it turned two ways) and also in getting the lamps on the Wheels with-out losing any current on the steel frame. This was fi nally accomplished by means of collector-rings placed on the axle, and there are now 720 lights on the outer circle, 504 on the inner circle, 250 on the towers, 320 on the por-tals under the towers, 500 on the fence enclosure, besides enough on the spokes and other points to run the total number to nearly 3,000. (Anderson 1992)

Because the subsoil at the Midway Plaisance, where the Wheel was sited for the exposition, was so poor, the Wheel’s foundations had to be extensive and complex. In fact, they were solid concrete monoliths, inter-spersed with steel beams that rested upon piles driven through blue clay to hardpan, 39 feet from the surface. To cure the concrete blocks in frigid winter weather, a series of steam pipes was placed throughout the concrete mass. The Midway where the Wheel once stood is now part of the Univer-sity of Chicago campus.

The Ferris Wheel was a gigantic, circling steel-tension Wheel that had never been done before. The outer rims of the two Wheel elements were made up of 36 sections, built up in the same manner as bridge chords. These sections were made of cast iron with serrated teeth. They were se-curely bolted to the outer rim of the two Wheel elements. Between these outer rims and at panel points were hung the passenger-carrying cars. Over the glass windows of these cars were placed iron bars for the safety of passengers.

The Wheel’s axle, which carried the entire weight of the Wheel, cars, and people, was hollow with a 32-inch outside diameter and a 17-inch bore. It was forged by Bethlehem Iron Company in Bethlehem, Pennsylva-

APPENDIX C 137

nia, and weighed 45 tons.1 At each end of the axle were two immense spi-ders or hubs, each weighing 12.5 tons. Lifting this immense, 70-ton weight 140 feet into the air and placing it in beams upon the Wheel’s steel, space-frame support towers took less than two hours.

The 2.5-inch-diameter spokes connected to the hubs of the axle were 80 feet long.

The Wheel, including its cars, weighed nearly 1,100 tons. Including the towers and engines, the entire machine weighed 2,200 tons and cost $362,000 to fabricate. When fi nished, the imposing circular structure was taller than a 20-story building, of which there were none around Chicago at the time.

Power for the Wheel came from a 1,000 horsepower, horizontal, coal-fi red steam engine. An identical engine was held in reserve for emergencies. To rotate the Wheel, power from the steam engine was transmitted by a triple set of gear wheels that ran a sprocket chain, the pins of which fi tted the serrated teeth of a cast-iron element on the Wheel’s rims.

Six passenger cars could be loaded at a time. The Wheel made six stops for new passengers and, once loaded, it made one complete revolution so each passenger experienced at least two revolutions during a 20-minute ride, for which they paid 50 cents.

As the signature attraction of the World’s Columbian Exposition, the Wheel made 10,000 revolutions and was ridden by 1.5 million fairgoers during the 19 weeks it operated. Ferris’s magnifi cent Wheel so dominated the Exposition by its size and popularity that it captured the imagination of the entire nation—and the world.

In 1893, Scientifi c American reported, “The Wheel proved completely safe, as documented, withstanding gale-force winds and storms, absorbing lightning, and running fl awlessly through the duration of the exposition” (SA 1893).

Eleven years after the Chicago Exposition, the Ferris Wheel became the star attraction at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition. For it, the Wheel’s opera-tors required a space “155 feet by 254 feet to take care of the foundations during construction and the overhang of the Wheel. There is a very large part of this space that, after the Wheel is erected, can be used for other pur-poses” (Harris 1999).

A comprehensive paper addressing how to calculate the Wheel’s stresses was written by J. W. Schaub, “Method for Calculating the Stresses in the Ferris Wheel,” for Engineering News in 1894 (Schaub 1894).

1. Manufacturers of other major Wheel elements include Detroit Bridge and Iron Works of Detroit, Michigan (Wheel proper); Walker Manufacturing Com-pany of Cleveland, Ohio (cast-iron sprocket plates); Keystone Bridge Company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (driving chains); and William Todd and Company of Youngstown, Ohio (engines).


APPENDIX D

Conclusions Section of Ferris’s RPI Thesis

“Review of Wrought Iron Deck Bridge on the Boston Hoosac Tunnel & Western Railway at Schaghticoke, New York.”

—George Ferris, 1881

As the result of our investigation of this bridge, we fi nd the material and workmanship good, apparently, but the structure is open to severe

criticism in design. We fi nd the rivets are everywhere insuffi cient in number, and that the web members are unnecessarily weakened by improper dis-posal of the rivets; that the web members are so arranged as to produce se-vere bending stress in the chords; that the lateral bracing is poorly designed and insuffi ciently fastened; that the end bracing is practically worthless; that the lower chord is faulty, in that, there is not enough metal at the cen-tre and a surplus at the ends, and in that the web members do not intersect it so that the centre of applied forces is anywhere near the centre of gravity of the chord; that the upper chord is faulty in that the greatest stress is in the direction of least metal or rather of least strength; that there are many cases of defi cient area of parts and especially is this true in the centre of the upper chord; and fi nally that parts of the bridge are liable, under the loads to which the structure is subject every day, to be strained nearly or quite to the elastic limit. For these reasons we do not consider the bridge in its pres-ent condition safe for public use. (Unpublished RPI graduation thesis)

APPENDIX D 139


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Weingardt, R. (1978). Sound the charge: The western frontier from Spillman Creek

to Summit Springs, Jacqueline Enterprises, Englewood, Colo.Weingardt, R. (1998). Forks in the road: Impacting the world around us, Palamar

Press, Denver, Colo.Weingardt, R. (2001). “Engineering legends: Octave Chanute and George Ferris.”

Leadership and Management in Engineering, ASCE, 1(4), 89–90.Weingardt, R. (2003). “Tomorrow’s engineer must run things, not just make them

run.” Perspectives in civil engineering: Commemorating the 150th anniversary

of the American Society of Civil Engineers, J. S. Russell, ed., ASCE, Reston, Va., 385–398.


Welsh, J., and Howes, B. (2004). Travel by Pullman: A century of service, MBI Pub-lishing Company, St. Paul, Minn.

Western Society of Engineers. (1970). The centennial of the engineer, Chicago.Whitaker, R. (1981). “The wheel that ran circles around the Eiffel tower.” Chicago

Tribune, Aug. 1.White, J., and von Bernewitz, M. W. (1928). The bridges of Pittsburgh, Cramer

Publishing, Pittsburgh, Pa.Whitford, N. (1906). History of the canal system of the state of New York, Bran-

dow Printing Company, Albany, N.Y.Wisely, W. (1974). The American civil engineer 1852–1974: The history, tradi-

tions and development of the American Society of Civil Engineers, ASCE, New York.

Miscellaneous and Archival Papers

Columbian Exposition Agreement with George Ferris (Nov. 29, 1892), Chicago, Ill.

Dangberg and Ferris families archival papers, at the Carson Valley Historical Soci-ety, Gardnerville, Nev.

Ferris family archival papers, at the College Archives, Seymour Library, Knox Col-lege, Galesburg, Ill.

Ferris family genealogical research papers, including records on signifi cant Ferris Wheel patent infringement litigation (assembled by Lora C. Little) at the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society Library, New York.

Ferris, George. (1892). Letter from Ferris to L.V. Rice (Dec. 12), Chicago, Ill.Ferris, George. (1896). Telegram from Ferris to Luther Rice (Sep. 11), Chicago, Ill.Charles Ledlie archival papers, 1861–1940, at the Missouri Historical Society, St.

Louis, Mo.Garden City Observation Wheel Company v. the Ferris Wheel Company patent

infringement case (more than 400 pages of court documents) at the National Archives, Chicago.

abolition movement, 24–25Achard, Ruth, 34Achard, Steve, 64, 78Albert, Prince of England, 24Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa), 68American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 60,

68, 122American Tower Company, 72Anderson, Norman D., 78, 115–16, 121, 122Ardery, Alexander and Mame, 44, 63, 114, 125Assis Cintra, Francisco de, 43Atlantic City, 65Aunt Jemima syrup, 103automobiles, 97

Baird, George E., 99–100, 107Bakewell, Mr., 61Baltimore, Cincinnati and Western Railroad

(BC&W), 48–49Baltimore, Garnett Douglas, 45Barber, Oscar T. and Emma, 40, 44, 61, 89,

114, 124Barquet, Joseph, 25Barry, H. M., 78Basset, Walter, 109–10Beijing Great Wheel, 9, 126, 130the bends, 52–53Benz, Karl, 97Berlin wheel, 126Bessemer-produced steel, 58, 59Bethlehem Iron Company, 136–37bicycle wheels, 4, 135

Biltmore Estate, Ashville, 15Blackpool wheel, 110Booth, H. Cecil, 109–10Boston Hoosac Tunnel & Western Railway,

Schaghticoke, NY, 45, 139bridge-building, xvi

Bessemer-produced steel, 58cable-suspension bridges, 62caisson foundations, 52–53cantilever-truss bridges, 9, 65–67, 122Central Bridge, Cincinnati, 65–67, 81by FKC, 60–67, 122Henderson Bridge, 51–54steel-truss bridges, 62suspension bridges, 54trestle spans, 53–54

Bridge Engineering (Waddell), 44Briggs Stadium, 56Broderick, Matthew, 25Brooklyn Bridge, 8, 41, 52–54, 58, 97, 125, 130Brown, George W., 29Bunce, James and Harriet, 20, 27–28Burden, Henry, 37Burden water wheel, 37, 38, 45Burke, Judge, 116Burnham, Daniel H., 61, 67, 124

challenge to engineers, 3–4, 70–72, 73closure of the Fair, 100reviews of Ferris’s project, 6, 76–77, 79–80,

86–87See also World’s Columbian Exposition of

1893

INDEX 153

Index

Note: George Ferris, Jr. is referred to as G. F. throughout this index.


Burnham and Root, 61Burr, William H., 44

caisson foundations, 52–53California gold rush, 24, 26–27California Midwinter International Exposition,

San Francisco, 106Cambria Iron Company, Johnstown, 59canal locks, 78–79, 84cantilever-truss bridges, 9, 65–67, 122Carnegie, Andrew, 54, 72, 122Carnegie Steel Company, Pittsburgh, 54, 56, 59Carson, Kit, 32Carson City, Nevada, 38–40, 44Carson Valley, Nevada, 31–40Catskill Aqueduct, 44Central Bridge, Cincinnati, 65–67, 81, 122Central Pacifi c Railroad, 48Chicago, 2

See also World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893

Chicago, Burlington and Quincy (CB&Q) Railroad, 28

Chicago House Wrecking Company, 118–20Chi Phi fraternity, 43chronology, xvii, 129–30Civil Engineers’ Club of Cleveland, 97Civil War, 29–30, 48–49Clark Street amusement park, 108–11, 118Clemens, Samuel, 32Cleveland, Grover, 58, 94, 130Clyde, H., 98Cody, Buffalo Bill, 6, 77, 102–3Colton, Chauncey, 27–28Columbian Exposition. See original Ferris

Wheel (at Chicago); World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893

Columbus Day, 103Comiskey Park, 56compressed air, 78–79Coney Island, 119consumption, 107–8the corn planter, 29Cotton, Joseph, 110Cracker Jacks, 103Cradlebaugh Bridge waterwheel, 37–38Cream of Wheat, 103

Dalton, Timothy, 110Dangberg, Eva, 96Dangberg, Frederick and Maggie, 10, 30–37,

64, 114, 125business ventures with George Ferris, Sr.,

35, 60investments in the Ferris Wheel, 78, 88–89, 99support of GW’s activities, 35–36, 44, 55, 61

Dangberg, Grace, 34–35Darrow, Clarence S., 43Detroit Bridge and Iron Works, 137The Devil in the White City (Larson), 67Douglas, Stephen, 23Dreiser, Theodore, 108Dubai wheel, 126Duis, Perry, 120The Duquesne Club, 115

Eads, James B., 52, 58Eads Bridge, St. Louis, 8, 51–52, 54, 58, 122, 129Earls Court wheel, 109–10Eiffel, Alexandre Gustave, 3, 7, 58, 72, 104Eiffel Tower, xv–xvi, 2–3, 5, 71–74, 104, 130electrical power, 7Eli Bridge Company, 121Empire of India Exhibition, London, 109–10engineering of G.F. See professional activities

of G.F.Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsylvania

(ESWP), 56, 60, 67–68Erie Canal, 14, 17Exposition Company. See World’s Columbian

Exposition of 1893

family tree, xvii, 131–32Father of American Civil Engineering, 17Feeser, Larry, 43Fenway Park, 56Ferris, Albert, 60, 112Ferris, Ben, 34, 40, 44, 50, 112, 114–15, 124Ferris, Edward, 60, 112Ferris, Fred and Elizabeth, 29–30, 34, 37, 44,

112, 114–15, 124Ferris, George Washington Gale, Jr., 6, 9, 132

appearance, 2, 6–7, 90Atlantic City vacation, 65birth and childhood, 28, 36–38, 40

INDEX 155

death and memorials, xii, 112–15, 123education, 40–45estate, 112, 115, 117family background, 10health challenges, 53, 107–8, 111–12marriage, 57, 60–61, 108, 111–12, 115personal qualities, 43, 113See also original Ferris Wheel; professional

activities of G. F.Ferris, George Washington Gale, Sr. and

Martha, 16–17, 19, 21–22, 25–33, 132business activities, 35, 39–41, 60in Carson Valley, 32–38death of George Sr., 109death of Martha, 116–17family reunion, 98fi nancial challenges, 31–33, 43golden wedding anniversary, 63move to California, 50move to the Nevada, 29–31

Ferris, Henry, 28Ferris, James, 11–12, 131Ferris, James II, 12–13, 131Ferris, Jeffrey and Mary, 11–12, 131Ferris, Kaufman and Company (FKC), 60–61,

111, 123, 130Central Bridge, Cincinnati, 65–67, 122Ninth Street Bridge, Pittsburgh, 61–64, 122Wheeling bridge, 65

Ferris, Margaret Ann Beatty, 6, 57, 64, 130death, 124fi rst ride on the Wheel, 8, 85–86grand opening of the Wheel, 87–89, 92health challenges, 117–18marriage, 57, 60–61, 108, 111–12, 115support of the Wheel project, 74–75, 77

Ferris, Nathan Olmstead, 23–24, 26–27Ferris, Samuel, 13Ferris, Silvanus and Sally, 13, 14–23, 27–29, 132Ferris, Sylvanus and Mary, 12–14, 131–32Ferris, Sylvanus Harvey, 50Ferris, Timothy, 41Ferris-Nesbit company, 16Ferris Ranch, Carson Valley, Nevada, 32–38the Ferris Wheel. See original Ferris WheelFerris Wheel Company, 78, 123

Army’s interest in, 8, 115–16

Ferris Wheel Park plan, 108–11, 118fi nancial challenges, 108, 112lawsuits against the Exposition, 101, 103–4,

116moves of the original Wheel, 105–6, 108–9offi cial press packet, 134–36patent infringement lawsuit, 65, 93–94, 99,

105, 107See also original Ferris Wheel

Ferris Wheel Day, 122Ferris Wheel Newsletter, 122Ferris Wheel Park, 108–11, 118Ferris wheels

copies and imitations, 96, 104–5, 106, 109–10defi nition, xvilife span, 110portable versions, 96, 120–21at Prater Park, Vienna, 104–5, 110, 122, 130twenty-fi rst century wheels, xvi, 9, 125–26, 130See also original Ferris Wheel

Ferris Wheels: An Illustrated History

(Anderson), 78“The Ferris Wheel Waltz” (Valisi and Clyde), 98The Financier (Dreiser), 108Firth, J. K., 106Forbes Field, 56Ford, Henry, 97Fowler, H. W., 76“Freedom Raising the World,” 73Freeman, Morgan, 25Fremont, John C., 32

G. W. G. Ferris Engineering Company, 55–56, 111, 123, 130

Central Bridge, Cincinnati, 65–66expertise in structural steel, 59inspection work, 82, 122staff, 59

G. W. Schmidt store, 115Gale, George Washington, 15–20, 22, 24–25,

27–28Galesburg, Illinois, 10, 18–25

abolition movement, 24–25the Ferris Mill, 22Knox College, 10, 22–26, 28railroad line, 27–28

Games of the III Olympiad, 119–20


Garden City Observation Wheel Company, 65, 93–94, 99, 105, 107

Glory (fi lm), 25gold rush, 24, 26–27Goodwich, Adams, 78Grant, Ulysses S., 40, 48Gray and Gronau, 75Graydon, John, 109Great Jupiter wheel, 99–100Great Wheel Corporation, 126Gronau, William F., 56, 59, 61, 121

Ferris Wheel designs, 74–76Ferris Wheel oversight, 85–86

Grosscup, Peter, 107

Hallsted, James C., 55, 61, 121Hallsted and McNaugher, 68, 123hamburgers, 103Handy, Moses, 91Harris, Eleanor, 119, 120Harrison, Benjamin, 2Harrison, Carter, 92, 100Henderson Bridge, 51–55Henry de Feriers, 11Hewes, Virgil H., 45Holt, Glen, 120Home Insurance Building skyscraper, Chicago,

8, 54, 58–59, 122Homestead Plant, Pittsburgh, 122Hoover, Herbert, 122horseless carriages, 97Hunt, Alfred E., 68Hunt, Robert W., 59, 67, 70, 77–78, 90–91,

122Hyde, Martha Edgerton, 21–22

Indian War of 1864, 30International Engineering Congress, 73International Exposition of 1889, Paris, xv–xvi,

2–3, 71, 73–74, 102International Exposition of 1900, Paris, 110iron, 58–59

J. H. Ledlie Company, 45–49Jackson Park, Chicago, 3, 109Jacobs, Charles, 96Jenney, William Le Baron, 58–59, 122

Jervis, John B., 17Jervis, Timothy, 17, 18John Fritz Medal, 122Johnstown Flood, 130Jones, Lois, 37Juicy Fruit gum, 103

Kaufman, Gustave, 5, 43, 51–52, 56, 60, 113, 121

See also Ferris, Kaufman and Company (FKC)

Kaufman, Joseph, 60Kaufman, Simon, 60Kaufman and Company, 123Kennedy, Julian, 77, 122Kentucky Derby, 52Keystone Bridge Company, 55, 72, 137King, Dave, 123King Bridge Company, Cleveland, 55, 66–67Knox College, 10, 22–26, 28

La Grande Roue, Paris, 110Larson, Erik, 67, 103, 124lawsuits of the Ferris Wheel Company, xv

against the Exposition, 101, 103–4, 116Garden City’s patent infringement suit, 65,

93–94, 99, 105, 107Ledlie, Charles, 49Ledlie, J. H., 38, 45–49Lincoln, Abraham, 28–29Lincoln-Douglas debates, 23, 28Lincoln Park, 108Lindenthal, Gustave, 62–63Little Egypt, 6, 77The Living Daylights (fi lm), 110L&N Bridge, Cincinnati, 66London Eye, 9, 126, 130London Underground, 108Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, 118–20Louisville, Kentucky, 52Louisville and Nashville (L&N) Railroad, 51Louisville Bridge and Iron Company (LB&IC),

51–55

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 68Maudslay, Sons and Field (MS&F), 109McKinley, William, 130

INDEX 157

McNaugher, David, 5, 59, 61, 113, 121Memphis Bridge, 73“Method for Calculating the Stresses in the

Ferris Wheel” (Schaub), 137Mexican water wheel, 37Midway Plaisance, Chicago, 3, 76–77, 123, 136Miles, Nelson A., 8, 91, 107, 115–16Morison, George S., 68, 72–73

Nanchang wheel, 126Nesbit, Robert, 16Nevada Central Railroad Company, 46, 48–49Ninth Street Bridge, Pittsburgh, 61–63, 122Noble, Alfred, 68, 115North Clark Street amusement park, 108–11,

118Noteware, Chauncey Norman, 15, 26, 31, 33,

39–40

Oakland Military Academy, 40–41observation wheels, xiOhio River bridge, 9Olmsted, Frederick Law, 15, 74Olmsted, Sally Maria, 15Olympic Games of 1904, 119–20Onderdonk, Andrew, 77–78, 90O’Neal, Brian, 115Oneida Institute of Science and Technology, 18original Ferris Wheel (at Chicago), 2, 8

Burnham’s review and acceptance of, 76–77, 79–80

closure of the Exposition, 99–100, 103–4, 116

committee approval, 79–80construction work, 57, 80–87continuous gear drive system, 107copies and imitations, 96, 104–6, 109–10costs, 80, 104descriptions, 133–37design team, 77–78dimensions, xi, 4, 136–37dismantling and moves, 105–6, 108–11,

118–20early sketches, 4electrical power, 87, 136Ferris’s designs, 74–77, 79–80, 97–98,

133–34

foundation, 123, 136funding, 6, 76–77, 78grand opening, 88–92media preview ride, 87–88passenger cars, 126, 135–36profi ts, 77, 80–81, 95, 102, 104ridership numbers, 8, 94–98, 137safety record, 95–97as salvage, 120souvenirs, 95–96, 122thunderstorm performance, 93–94trial runs, 8, 85–86views, 88, 90

Orlando wheel, 126Osborn, Annie, 52Osborn, Frank C., 43, 51–56, 66–67, 121Osborn, Kenneth, 56Osborn Engineering Company, 55–56

Pabst beer, 103Panama Canal, 68, 119Panic of 1893, 99, 105–6, 130Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889, xv–xvi,

2–3, 71, 73–74, 102Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900, 110Perkins, Jabez, 21picture postcards, 103Pi Eta Scientifi c Society, 43pinion wheels, 134Pittsburgh and Western Railroad Company

(P&WRC), 51, 60Pittsburgh Construction Company, 78, 111,

123Pledge of Allegiance, 103popcorn, 23–24portable wheels, 96, 121Prater Park wheel, Vienna, 104–5, 110, 122,

130professional activities of G. F., 7–10, 121–22

BC&W’s Elk River project, 49bridge-building projects, 60–63canal lock patents, 78–79, 84in Chicago, 67–69engineering fi rms, 3, 6, 59–61, 111, 123in ESWP, 56, 60, 67–68Ferris Wheel Company, 78Henderson Bridge, 51–54


for J. H. Ledlie Company, 45–49for Louisville Bridge and Iron Company,

51–54Ohio River bridge, 9Pittsburgh Construction Company, 78for Queen City Mining Company, 49structural steel work, 54–56See also original Ferris Wheel (at Chicago)

Pullman, George, 106–7Pullman Strike, 106–7

Queen City Mining Company, 49

Rabb, Laura S., 115railroads, 64

Baltimore, Cincinnati and Western, 48–49in Carson Valley, Nevada, 39Central Pacifi c, 48in Galesburg, Illinois, 27–28Louisville and Nashville, 51Nevada Central, 46, 48–49Pittsburgh and Western, 51Transcontinental, 38, 47Union Pacifi c, 47

the Reindeer, 28Reisenrad wheel, Prater Park, Vienna, 104–5,

110, 122, 130Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, xii, 41–45, 68,

129Alumni Hall of Fame, 125, 130Chi Phi fraternity, 43Ferris’s senior thesis, 45, 139Rational Mechanics course, 44–45

Revels, Hiram, 25“Review of Wrought Iron Deck Bridge. . .”

(Ferris), 45, 139“Revolving Wheels. . .” patent, 109Rice, Luther V., 8, 67, 81–87, 90, 98, 115–16,

121Riverside, California, 50Robert W. Hunt and Company, Chicago, 59, 123Roebling, Emily, 53, 97Roebling, John, 41, 58, 62Roebling, John A., 56, 97Roebling, Washington, 41–43, 52–53, 58, 125,

130Rookery Building, Chicago, 67–68, 123

Roosevelt, Theodore, 119Root, Barnabas, 25Roughing It (Twain), 32

Samson, Hudson, 115San Francisco Earthquake, 120Saturday Afternoon Club, 70–73Schaub, J. W., 137Schlatter, Francis, 117–18Schultz, Charles and Martha, 44, 114, 124SDC Corporation, 130Searles, William, 97Sears, Mary and Gregory, 38Shredded Wheat, 103Simmons, Thomas, 19Singapore Flyer, 9, 126, 130skyscrapers, 8, 54, 58–59, 122Snyder, Carl, 4, 5, 93, 133Somers, William, 94, 99, 107Somers patent wheel, 65, 94, 107St. Louis and Southeastern Railroad, 51St. Louis Exposition, 130, 137Statue of Liberty, 58steel, 54, 58–59, 121–22

Bessemer-produced steel, 58–59bridge trusses, 61for moving structures, xvitension wheels, 8–9, 76

The Stoic (Dreiser), 108structural metals. See steelSullivan, William, 96, 121suspension bridges, 54Sylvanus Ferris Homestead, 14

Taylor-Southgate Bridge, Cincinnati, 122tension-spoke wheels, xvi, 4–5, 8–9, 76, 96,

133–34terminology, xviTexas Star, 130That Brave Black Regiment, 25The Third Man (fi lm), 110Three Sisters Bridges, Pittsburgh, 63The Titan (Dreiser), 108“Tower of Babel,” 73Transcontinental Railroad, 38, 47trestle spans, 53–54tuberculosis, 107–8

INDEX 159

Twain, Mark, 32twenty-fi rst century Ferris wheels, xvi, 9,

125–26, 130typhoid fever, 111–12

Union Iron Mills (UIM), 53–54Union Pacifi c Railroad, 47U.S. Isthmian Canal Commission, 44, 68U.S. Mint at Carson City, 39–40

Valisi, G., 98van Beers, Jan, 108Van Rensselaer, Stephen, 41, 125, 130Victoria, Queen of England, 24Vincent, William A., 43, 78, 90–92

Wachter, W. H., 77Waddell, John A. L., 44Walker Manufacturing Company, 137Washington, Denzel, 25Washington Award, 122water wheels, 37–38Welles, Orson, 110West, Nehemiah, 19Western Society of Engineers (WSE), 115, 122Wilcox, Henry and Mary, 21–22

Wild West Show, 6, 77, 102–3Willard, Silas, 27–28William Todd and Company, 137World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, xv–xvi,

1–6, 102–3, 130attendance, 94, 100, 102Burnham’s challenge to engineers, 3–4,

70–73closure and dismantling, 99–100, 116, 119construction, 67–69electrical devices, 103Exposition Company lawsuits, 101, 103–4fi re, 93funding, 5–6, 61International Engineering Congress, 73lawsuits, 101, 103–4, 116Midway Plaisance, 3, 76–77, 123, 136Olmsted’s design, 15tower proposals, 72–73White City, 71, 74, 102See also original Ferris Wheel

Wright, Benjamin, 17wrought iron, 58–59

Yankee Stadium, 56Yerkes, Charles, 108


About the Author

Richard G. Weingardt, P.E., Dist.M.ASCE, is chairman of Richard We-ingardt Consultants, Inc., in Denver, Colorado. A practicing structural

engineer for 49 years, Weingardt is the author of nine books and some 600 published papers and articles on engineering, business, leadership, and creativity. His book Engineering Legends features the contributions of U.S. engineers in developing this country, from the Revo-lutionary War to present. His book Forks in the Roadearned the 2003 American Association of Engineer-ing Societies (AAES) Journalism Award; he is the fi rst and only engineer to ever receive the award. Weingardt writes regular columns in ASCE’s Leadership and Man-agement in Engineering Journal and in Structural Engi-neer magazine. He also often writes for STRUCTUREmagazine and contributes op-ed pieces to a variety of trade and non-trade publications.

Weingardt has held leadership roles in numerous professional and community groups, among them key appointments by three governors to policy-making state boards and commissions. He was the national president of the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) headquartered in Washington, D.C. A motiva-tional speaker, he has traveled extensively on all seven continents and lectured on all but Antarctica. He is in-ternationally recognized for popularizing the phrase, “The world is run by those who show up.”

A graduate of the University of Colorado with master’s and bachelor’s degrees in civil-structural engineering, Weingardt is a registered Professional Engineer in 30 states. The consulting fi rm he founded in 1966 has completed approximately 5,000 major projects world-wide. Many of them have received engineering excellence awards, among them: Concourses A, B, and C at Denver International Airport, Jefferson County Courthouse in Colorado, Integrated Teaching and Discovery Learn-ing Laboratories at the University of Colorado, Cowboy Hall of Fame in

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 161

Author Richard G. Weingardt in front of the London Eye.

Photograph by Evelyn Weingardt.


Oklahoma City, Ceres Agricultural Mills in western Russia, and Saleh Kamel Towers in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Weingardt is an ASCE Distinguished Member and the recipient of a myriad of awards from various professional and public groups. Among his pastimes is oil painting. Several of his landscapes of the American frontier hang in corporate headquarters around the world. He has appeared on sev-eral national TV programs, such as the History Channel’s Modern Marvelsand Fox News Channel’s On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.

Weingardt’s previous books are Engineering Legends: Great Ameri-can Civil Engineers (2005, ASCE Press); Forks in the Road: Impacting the World Around Us (1998, Palamar Publishing); RAUT: Teacher, Leader, En-gineer (1999, University of Colorado); Eye to the Future (2001, ACEC);Engineering Colorado (1989, CEC/Colorado); Seeing into the Future: The ACEC I-Book (1996, ACEC); Sound the Charge (1979, Jacqueline Publish-ing); Cylindrical Shell Design (1989, Jacqueline Publishing). His Web site is www.richardweingardt.com.

Weingardt and his wife Evelyn reside in Denver, Colorado and Phoenix, Arizona.

www.richardweingardt.com

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America transformed : engineering and technology in the nineteenth century