June 1956: President Eisenhower signs into law the Federal Aid Highway Act, and the construction of the Michigan’s Interstate Highway begins soon afterwards. November1959: I begin working at a small steel fabrication plant in Lansing Michigan. One of my first jobs at Douglas Steel Fabrication was rolling Red Lead paint on thirty-six-inch-deep bridge beams fabricated for Michigan’s Interstate Highway System. Douglas Steel expanded their operation by building a new fabrication plant on the west side of Lansing in the early 1960’s, with part of the plant designed for the fabrication of heavy structural. Because of the large volume of steel for the fabrication of bridge beams for Michigan highways during that time, the heavy structural department was referred to as the Bridge Shop. For over fifteen years I worked as a welder, fitter, and shop foreman fabricating bridge beams for Michigan’s highway bridges.
Fabrication of Michigan’s Mackinac Bridge and its approaches began in 1954 with millions of shop-driven riveted assemblies fabricated by American Bridge Co. in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, and shipped to the construction site for field riveting. In addition to the rivet fabrication of the Mackinac Bridge, it appears that American Bridge Co. also fabricated riveted bridge beams for the Mackinac Bridge approaches. I first discovered these after my wife and I participated in the 2023 Mackinac Bridge Labor Day Bridge Walk, and we revisited them before walking the bridge again in 2024. Photographing and examining the riveted connections on these bridge beams, I realized that every construction detail on the riveted bridge beams matched those I fabricated with welded connections, web reinforcement pin plates, diaphragm connection plates, and the diaphragms.
After over thirty years in steel fabrication, forty-plus years as an adjunct welding instructor, and many years in iron and steel preservation, to make this connection with my work in steel fabrication and preservation has left me a bit in awe of this experience. I will continue to write about iron and steel fabrication and its preservation because there is hardly any written or photographic record of the men and women who worked in steel fabrication plants. No industrial museum in the United States has any exhibits with the historic industrial tools or photographic record of the craftsmen who operated the tools or fabricated the bridge beams.
Vern Mesler, 2024
