Bridging Saint John Harbour (Historic Canada)

In the 1850s, lumber mill owner W. Kilby Reynolds, with engineer Edward R. Serrell, succeeded in building the first suspension bridge to connect divided Saint John. This operated as a toll crossing until 1858, when it became a government-owned structure. From then until the present, there have been two vehicular-pedestrian bridges and two rail bridges serving travelers crossing Saint John Harbour at the gorge at the Reversing Falls. By the third quarter of the 19th century, there was talk and plans for a second bridge, one which would cross at Navy Island to the North End. It took about 80 years before this plan came to fruition, and the Saint John Harbour Bridge opened in 1968. Through this rich collection of photographs, Bridging Saint John Harbour clearly shows the importance of the varied connector bridges over Saint John Harbour and how they came to be built.